1 Samuel 30 - Introduction

XXX.

(1 Samuel 30:1) Ziklag, David’s City, is Sacked by the Amelekites — David, after Consulting the Urim, Pursues them — The Captives are Recovered — The Friendly Cities are Rewarded.

EXCURSUS M: ON THE URIM AND THUMMIM (1 Samuel 30).

We read in the description of the high priest’s official vestments (Exodus 28:2), that over the ephod there was to be a “breastplate of judgment,” of gold, scarlet, purple, and fine linen, folded square and doubled, a span in length and width. In it were to be set four rows of precious stones, each stone with the name of a tribe of Israel engraved on it, that Aaron might “bear them upon his heart.” Inside the breastplate were to be placed the Urim and Thummim (the Light and the Perfection), and they, too, were to be on Aaron’s heart as he went in before the Lord.

What, now, were these mysterious gems? for that they were precious stones of some kind nearly all tradition seems agreed. Among the best supported traditional notices — quoted by Dean Plumptre in his learned article in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible — the following are the usually accepted ones.

(a) The Urim and Thummim “were identical with the twelve stones on which the names of the tribes of Israel were engraved, and the mode in which an oracle was given was by the illumination, simultaneous or successive, of the letters which were to make up the answer” (Jalkut Sifre, Zohar, in Exod., f. 105; Maimonides, R. ben Nachman, in Buxtorf, I.e.). Josephus (Antiq. iii. 7, § 5) adopts another form of the same story, and, apparently identifying the Urim and Thummim with the sardonyxes on the shoulders of the ephod, says that they were bright before a victory or when the sacrifice was acceptable, dark when any disaster was impending. Epiphanius (Deuteronomy 12 gemm.) and the writer quoted by Suidas present the same thought in yet another form. A single diamond placed in the centre of the breastplate prognosticated peace when it was bright, war when it was red, death when it was dusky.

(b) In the middle of the ephod, or within its folds, there was a stone or plate of gold, on which was engraved the sacred name of Jehovah, the Shem-hamme-phorash of Jewish cabbalists; and by virtue of this, the High Priest, fixing his gaze on it, or reading an invocation which was also engraved with the name, or standing in his ephod before the mercy-seat, or, at least, before the veil of the Sanctuary, became capable of prophesying, hearing the Divine voice within, or listening to it as it proceeded, in articulated sounds, from the glory of the Shechinah (Buxtorf, 50100, 7; Lightfoot, 6:278; Braunius, de Vestitu Hebrews, 2; Saalschütz, Archäolog., ii, 363).

That mighty storehouse of learning and tradition, the Babylonian Talmud, suggests, however, another and quite a different explanation of this mysterious and sacred possession of the Israelites in the earlier days of their existence as a people. (See note on 1 Samuel 30:7 of chapter 30)

The Talmud begins by explaining why the oracle was called Urim and Thummim. It is called Urim because it gave explanatory light to its utterances; and it is called Thummim because it made perfect and complete its declarations.
How did the Urim and Thummim indicate or manifest its utterances? Rabbi Yochanan saith: Boltoth (by means of) projection. Resh Lakish saith: Mitz-taphoth (by means of) transposition.

(1) Boltoth (by means of projection). — The several letters that were intended by the oracle to form the word or words in reply to an enquiry were raised from concave to convex (as the engraved letters on a seal were to become raised letters, as on a coin, and the priest, uniting these projected letters, thus ascertained the proper meaning of the intended answer, which he delivered to the enquirer. For instance: in the reply to David, ăleh — “go;” the ayin in Simeon, the lamedh in Levi, and the he in Judah become prominently raised, and thus the answer was unmistakable.

(2) Mitztaphoth (by means of transposition).-The letters composing the names of the twelve tribes transposed themselves into words, which indicated the oracle’s reply. But it is objected: How could the oracle express 1 Samuel 30:8 (i.e., “Thou shalt without fail recover all”), since the letter tsadde, for instance, is not to be found in any of the names of the tribes? nor is the letter teth to be found there either. To this it is responded that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were engraved on the gems, as also the Hebrew words signifying “the tribes of Jeshurun.”

Thus the Hebrew alphabet in the Urim and Thummim is made complete. — Treatise Yoma, fol. 73, Colossians 1 and 2.