30 And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron’s heart, when he goeth in before the Lord: and Aaron shall bear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before the Lord continually.

Today we learn that the Urim and Thummim would be placed within the breastplate in the priest’s clothing. This, of course, raises the question, “what on earth is the Urim and Thummim?”

The reason these words sound strange is because they are simply the phonetic representations of the original Hebrew words. There was no attempt made to find a common English counterpart, perhaps because none exists. As far as what these Hebrew words mean in their own language, the closest terms would be “light” and “perfection.” I presume those words were not used in the English translation because they are intangible and conceptual, whereas it seems that the Urim and Thummim were physical objects, given their placement within the breastplate.

There are only a few references to the Urim and Thummim elsewhere in the scriptures, the last reference being in Nehemiah. It is possible that they were lost during the Babylonian captivity, as they are never heard of afterward.

The best clue we have as to the purpose of the Urim and Thummim comes from 1 Samuel 28:6: “And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.” It would seem that they were tools somehow used to receive the will of the Lord. This is an interesting idea. Divine artifacts that can impart portions of God’s spirit have certainly been invoked by Christian churches in the past, but I feel that today such things are generally considered idolatrous and likely a scam. Today we tend to view our interactions with God as being purely spiritual, with little or no physical medium to assist in the process.

Whatever they might have been, the Urim and Thummim were apparently held in the breastplate of the priest. Given that the breastplate was likely woven linen, some have suspected that it was woven with the front and a back, like a little bag, and the artifacts were held in there. It specifically says that the Urim and Thummim were in the breastplate of Aaron, which might mean there was only one set, and it was exclusively carried by the High Priest, or Aaron might just be being used as a representative for all priests, and all of them carried a pair.