In this place of Numbers 27 [the Urim] are called haurim [הָאוּרִים], with he [ה] prefixed — which the Hebrews call the “notificative” [article] — that it might, namely, be more expressed, and [that] that reckoning of interrogating the Lord might be indicated. Elsewhere, however, with that he removed, [they are called] Urim. And that [in] a twofold [way]: for either solitarily, Urim, as here and [in] 1 Kings [Sam.] 28; or conjointly, as elsewhere they are always called Urim and Thummim. And the former name indeed signifies “illuminations,” “illuminating [ones],” or “lights”; but the latter, “perfections,” or “perfecting [ones],” as also in the Chaldee Targum, Uraia and Thummaia: the Greeks rendered [them] τὰ δῆλα [“the manifest things”], δήλωσιν καὶ ἀλήθειαν [“manifestation and truth”], φωτισμοὺς καὶ τελειώσεις [“illuminations and perfections”], φωτίζοντας καὶ τελείους [“illuminating and perfect”]. Our interpreter [renders them] “doctrine and truth”; or [understands] that the Priests themselves are adorned with these ensigns, or something like [that], as seemed fitting. St. Jerome (on Hosea 3): “Teraphim,” he says, “the Septuagint interpreted δήλους [‘manifest’]; Aquila φωτισμούς [‘illuminations’]; and these same are ἐν λογείῳ (or λογίῳ), that is, in the rational.” But truly Aelian narrates (bk. 14 of the Various History) [that] among the Egyptians anciently the Judges were Priests—
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—and [that] the chief of these was he who was of all the most advanced in age, and that this one judged all the others. “It behooved, moreover” (that I may now retain his very words) “[that] he himself be a most just man, and sparing to no one at all. He had, moreover, an image about [his] neck, of a sapphire stone; and that image was called Ἀλήθεια [Aletheia], ‘Truth.’” For the ancient Egyptians emulated, in many things, the institutions of the Jews. And at Hierapolis, he who interrogated the oracles was ἀρχιερεύς [archiereus, “high-priest”], as Lucian says (in On the Syrian Goddess).