Urim and Thummim - Exodus 28

I want to talk about the most interesting discovery that I made in chapter 28, which was reference to the Urim and Thummim. The only context I had for the Urim and Thummim was it’s use during the translation of the Book of Mormon, which were two stones set in some type of spectacle setting fastened on to a breast plate that Joseph Smith wore while he read the gold plate engravings and spoke the English translation. This was all I had ever heard of about them and the concept is really weird. Imagine my surprise when I was listening to the lecture by TB about the priestly temple clothes and I hear him talk about the “oo-reem and thoo-meem.” I was like “wait that sounds familiar, so I rewind it a bunch of times and listen to it again and went and looked at verse 30 and sure enough, right there was spelled out by the Lord “Urim and Thummim.” This was such a testimony strengthening thing for me because this weird, obscure concept that was rooted in the gospel’s restoration was suddenly tied to something that God had used throughout thousands of years. This also means that the Urim and Thummim can be examined not just by LDS scholars but from all scriptorians throughout the Abrahamic religions.

According to TB and some other references, there were two stones, and even though I didn’t see it specified in the chapter, one black and one white. They were held in a pouch on the breastplate right over Aaron’s heart and were used to make decisions. TB and the others suggest that this means that only questions could be asked of God that had two outcomes like “yes” or “no” or one choice or the other. Seems to me like this was kind of “luck of the draw” type of situation and is very different from the ways that they were used in LDS accounts. But if God commanded that these stones be used to communicate His will to the priests, then I guess it can be assumed that the “yes/no” answers wouldn’t be random but would be dictated by God as well.

An interesting tidbit about the Urim and Thummim was that the way that it was spelled in Hebrew. I’m just going to quote TB here because it is the easiest to understand, “here in Exodus, the first letter of the word Urim is the Hebrew ‘Aleph’, which is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And, the first letter of the word Thumim is the Hebrew ‘Tav’, which is the LAST letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The Aleph is the Hebrew equivalent to Alpha, and the Tax equivalent to Omega… Alpha-Omega, Aleph-Tav. So, the Urim and the Thummim represent part of God’s very nature… the first and the last.” The Urim and Thummim is used to communicate God’s will to the people, and the name also represents God’s whole, complete, total, and all-encompassing nature.

As far as the Urim and Thummim being used in the LDS context, they are first referenced chronologically in Ether 3:23 when God gives “these two stones… and ye shall seal them up also with the things which ye shall write,” to the brother of Jared. It is presumed that with these two stones God shows the brother of Jared “all the inhabitants of the earth which had been, and also all that would be; and he withheld them not from his sight, even until the ends of the earth.” Incidentally, these are the same two stones that Joseph Smith used for a Urim and Thummim while translating the Book of Mormon and also for receiving several of the revelations recorded in the D&C. I would assume that it was these same two stones that Limhi took to Mosiah in Mosiah 28:13 and was used in the translation of the 24 Jaredite plates that they found.

Abraham also “had the Urim and Thummim, which the Lord my God had given unto me,” to receive the great vision about the stars. I’m not sure what happened to those ones though. The Hebrew Urim and Thummim was used by Aaron, Joshua, David, Saul, and Ezra for decision making and discernment. Here’s a screenshot of the church’s write up about the Urim and Thummim.