Consulted Under the Judges and Kings, Silent by the Second Temple

Narrative use of the Urim and Thummim clusters in the period of the Judges and the early monarchy, when figures including Saul and David are described consulting them, usually through the High Priest, for guidance on specific practical questions, most often military ones, functioning as a recognised institutional channel of divine guidance distinct from prophecy. Their consultation appears to fall away as a recorded practice well before the end of the First Temple period, and later biblical and post biblical Jewish tradition, including passages in Ezra reflecting on priests unable to determine certain matters until a priest should arise who could consult Urim and Thummim, treats the practice as already unavailable by the return from Babylonian exile.

Rabbinic tradition subsequently held that the Urim and Thummim, along with several other specific gifts, ceased to function with the end of the First Temple and the classical era of prophecy, and Van Dam's study treats this rabbinic reckoning as broadly consistent with what the biblical text itself implies, an institution whose active use is confined to a specific, comparatively early window of Israelite religious history rather than one that continued unbroken into the Second Temple period the surviving priestly breastplate tradition otherwise describes.