1. Leviticus 8:8 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

What are the Urim and Thummim?

Leviticus 8:8 (ESV)

8 And he placed the breastpiece on him, and in the breastpiece he put the Urim and the Thummim.

Urim and Thummim are Hebrew words which literally mean lights and perfection, respectively. They seem to be some kind of mechanism which revealed God’s will. They were capable of giving a positive, negative, or neutral reply to a specific question. The Urim and Thummim were consulted on various occasions in early Israel, but by post-exilic times they had dropped out of use (Numbers 27:21; Deuteronomy 33:8; 1 Samuel 14:41).