The Oracle of Yahveh Author:Paul Carus Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE BREASTPLATE OF JUDGMENT. IN the description of the dress of the high priest the Urim and Thummim are mentioned in connection with both the ephod and the b... more »reastplate of judgment. The main passage is in Exodus xxviii, which is to be compared with Leviticus viii. Both belong to the priestly writings and are now agreed upon to be post-Exilic. The breastplate of the high priest is called in Hebrew khoshen hammishpat.24 The word khoshen is of doubtful meaning and of unknown etymology, but mishpat is well known and'means "judgment, decision, destiny." This breastplate of judgment was ornamented "with cunning work" and was wrought of gold, blue, purple, and scarlet, and of fine-twisted linen. The high priest wore it on his breast, fastened with chains of pure gold on the four corners. Twelve precious stones, bearing the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, were set on it in four rows. The breastplate was tied by itsrings to the rings of the ephod with a lacing of blue (Ex. xxviii. 28) so as to be inseparable from the latter, and here the Urim and Thummim were kept. The proposition of Josephus (Ant. Ill, 8, 9) that the precious stones on the breastplate were the Urim and Thummim, is refuted by the fact that they are distinctly mentioned in one and the same passage (Ex. xxviii. 17 and 30) as two different things and so his theory needs no refutation; but the idea that the breastplate was a receptacle or, as Professor Moore proposes, a pouch, and was made for the special purpose of receiving the Urim and Thummim is commonly accepted and seems at first sight quite plausible. It is based upon the translation of the mooted passage in the authorized version which is grammatically quite irreproachable, yet must be rejected as improbable and lacking, outside of this isolated passage,...« less