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Updated: May 31, 2025
Furthermore, "courts, like cities, and villages, or like legislative bodies, will sometimes have their leaders; and it may happen that a single individual will be the prime cause of a decision to overturn the deliberate act of a whole State or of the United States; yet we are admonished to receive their opinions as the ancients did the responses of the Delphic oracle, or the Jews, with more propriety, the communications from Heaven delivered by Urim and Thummim to the High Priest of God's chosen people."
Now it is quite literally probable, that this world, having now for some five hundred years absolutely refused to do as it is plainly bid by every prophet that ever spoke in any nation, and having reduced itself therefore to Saul's condition, when he was answered neither by Urim nor by prophets, may be now, while you sit there, receiving necromantic answers from the witch of Endor.
"And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim." Exod. xxviii. 30. The Egyptian judges also wore breastplates, on which was represented the figure of Ra, the sun, and Thme, the goddess of Truth, representing, says Gliddon, "Ra, or the sun, in a double capacity physical and intellectual light; and Thme, in a double capacity justice and truth." Ancient Egypt, p. 33.
God's servants generally find that their promotion means harder duties and multiplied perplexities. 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. David did what we shall do, if we are wise he asked God to guide him. How that guidance was asked and given we are not here told; but the analogy of 1 Samuel xxx. 7, 8, suggests that it was by the Urim and Thummim, interpreted by the high-priest.
The very idea of the ark itself was borrowed, as the discoveries of the modern Egyptologists have shown us, from the banks of the Nile; and the breastplate of the high priest, with its Urim and Thummim, was indebted for its origin to a similar ornament worn by the Egyptian judge. The system was the same; in its application, only, did it differ.
Let us therefore study it attentively not merely as a narrative which, in the dramatic force of its gruesome simplicity, is not surpassed, if it is equalled, by the witch scenes in Macbeth but as a piece of evidence bearing on an important anthropological problem. He therefore "inquired of Jahveh," but "Jahveh answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets."
Thus, for example, when David inquired of the Urim and Tummim if Saul would pursue him, the high priest Abiathar beheld gleaming forth the letter Yod in Judah's name, Resh in Reuben's name, and Dalet in Dan's name, hence the answer read as follows: Yered, "He will pursue."
It is not for nothing, either, that the umbrella has become the very foremost badge of modern civilisation the Urim and Thummim of respectability. Its pregnant symbolism has taken its rise in the most natural manner. Consider, for a moment, when umbrellas were first introduced into this country, what manner of men would use them, and what class would adhere to the useless but ornamental cane.
Several passages of Scripture leave room to believe, that an articulate voice came forth from the propitiatory, or holy of holies, beyond the veil of the tabernacle, and that this voice was heard by the high-priest. If the Urim and Thummim did not make answer, it was a sign of God's anger. Saul abandoned by the spirit of the Lord, consulted it in vain, and obtained no sort of answer.
It was not, however, proper for him to pronounce a law in the presence of his teacher Moses, and he was accordingly punished for his lack of reverence to his teacher Moses. God had previously said that whenever Joshua wanted to inquire of God, he was "to stand before Eleazar the priest, and inquire of him by judgement of the Urim and Tummin." But this did not come about.
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