In NUMBERS, chapter 27, our text signifies that the Lord would respond about practical matters, when it says: “If anything is to be done, Eleazar shall consult the Lord.” And these [practical matters] seemed above — from Josephus’s own words — to have been military only. But truly one ought to take “practical” not so tightly as is sometimes done by the Philosophers, but so that it embraces all [things] which require some action of a man, whether interior (of the mind, or of the will), or exterior. For although in the Greek and Hebrew those words “If anything is to be done” are not [present], nevertheless the very thing and sense of them is signified through those subjoined [words], of going-in and going-out, about which [I spoke] before. From which it is also understood [that] every kind of actions is signified — as much of war as of peace, as much of sacred as of profane, of heavenly and of earthly [affairs] — although more examples are at hand of military expeditions than of other business: as [in] 1 Kings [Sam.] 14, v. 19; ch. 23, v. 10; ch. 30, v. 7; bk. 2, ch. 2, v. 1; ch. 5, v. 22. Yet these [are] public affairs, or [those] which concern [public] persons; [and] that repeated observation — [set down] once and again in ch. 7 of Yoma (fol. 72b and 73), which Rambam also notes (ch. 10, On the Vessels of the Temple) — indicates [them as] public: [namely] that, through Urim, the Priest should interrogate God for the King; for the Av Beit Din [אב בית דין], that is, for the father [president] of the Sanhedrin, [its] senate, or the Prince; for mi she-ha-tsibbur tsarikh bo [מי שהציבור צריך בו], that is, for everyone who is necessary to the community — of which kind is reckoned the Meshuach Milḥamah [משוח מלחמה], that is, the Priest who was peculiarly anointed, by the prescript of the law, for the direction of military affairs; finally, for kol ha-ʿedah [כל העדה], that is, for the whole Sanhedrin and Assembly [Church].
But the interrogation would be infinite, if, as often as anything is to be done, so often one must interrogate. But that modification is easily understood, which was expressed elsewhere, and which the very [word] of interrogating—
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—and consulting brings [in]: namely, “If anything be obscure or ambiguous.” For interrogation or consultation is not about [things] open, and placed, as they say, “before one’s feet.” “Let not a god intervene” (says a certain [poet]) “unless a knot worthy of a deliverer has befallen” [Horace, Ars Poetica 191]. This matter of interrogation the Seventy [Septuagint] and the Hebrews seem to have expressed in another manner. For those [the LXX] prescribe that there be interrogated “the judgment τῶν δήλων [tōn dēlōn, of the manifest things], of the things manifest before the Lord.” But these [the Hebrews], “as concerning the judgment [of] the Urim” [mishpat ha-urim]. For often their “In” is put for “concerning.” If, however, we should prefer not “concerning,” but “in the judgment,” by these words also the manner in which God is to be interrogated will be grasped. And in Num. 31 (quest. 5), Abulensis thinks [that] the manner of inquiring which [of the captives] were virgins was, not improbably, through Urim and Thummim — although there [it fits] less aptly.
But if you should ask why God deigned to respond about human and perishable matters of this kind — even through the Prophets — Origen gives an excellent reason (bk. 1 Against Celsus), in these words: “To the Gentiles, seeking the knowledge of future things from oracles, auspices, auguries, belly-speakers [ventriloquists], soothsayers, [and] Chaldean nativity-casters — all which arts are forbidden among the Jews — if they [the Jews] had had no solace from the foreknowledge of the future, surely, impelled by a certain human lust of knowing future things, they would have despised their own affairs [religion], as having nothing divine in themselves; nor would they have received any other Prophet after Moses, nor committed their words [sermons] to letters, and would have deserted to the oracles of the nations, or themselves attempted to institute something similar among themselves. Wherefore it is nothing absurd [that] the Prophets of that nation were wont to respond even about certain fortuitous [chance] matters, whereby they might satisfy those desirous of knowing such things — as Samuel [answered] about the lost asses, and about the sickness of the royal boy, that one about whom it is written in the third book of Kingdoms [3 Kgs / 1 Kgs]: otherwise, how could those who patronized the Jewish law rebuke anyone wishing to consult the oracles of idols — as Elias [Elijah] is read rebuking Ochozias [Ahaziah]: ‘Is it because there is no GOD in Israel, that ye go to Baal, to consult the Myiaean [fly-] god of the Accaronites [Ekronites]?’” [2 Kgs 1:3]. To me, indeed, it seems to have been well arranged — not only that our Savior would be born of a virgin, but also that Prophets were given to the Jews who would foretell of the future, not only those universal [things]: about CHRIST, about worldly kingdoms, about the future fortunes of the Israelites, about the nations to believe in the SAVIOR, and many others which pertain to Him — but [also] about private affairs too: as about the lost asses sought by Kish, about the sickness with which the son of the King of Israel was sick, or if any other such thing is had in the scriptures.
And [in] bk. 3 (near the beginning), “How,” he says, “will those show us — [they] who cast the reproach of foolishness at the Jews and Christians — that the nation of the Jews could have subsisted without any presence of [fulfilled] promises? And when the neighboring nations sought oracles, each at the shrines of their own gods (as they were then held), [how] would these alone — who had learned the contempt of external divinities, so that [they held], not [that they were] Gods, but demons (being, forsooth, admonished by the voice of the Prophets that all the gods of the nations are demons) — have had no one who, professing himself an interpreter of the divine mind, would draw to himself, [away] from those vain [spirits], the minds of those who otherwise, by the desire of knowing future things, would have defected to the demons worshipped by others? Consider, therefore, whether it was not necessary [that] they have at home an abundance of better seers [prophets] — [they] who despised the external [gods] together with their divinities. Therefore, since miracles happened everywhere — as he himself soon mentions Aesculapius’s healings and ora—
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—[the oracle] surpassing [all], in whole cities dedicated and devoted to himself [Aesculapius] — Tricca, Epidaurus, Cos, Pergamon — and Aristeas of Proconnesus, and a certain other [seer], a Clazomenian, and Cleomedes of Astypalaea: [is it likely that] among the Jews alone — [who were] pleasing to themselves as the peculiar people of GOD, the founder of all universal things — there was nothing of signs or prodigies which might confirm faith in Him, joined with the hope of another, better life? But how could anyone think this? For they would at once have defected from their own God, on whose aid they had before depended, to those external soothsayers and health-bestowing Gods, had they felt no presence of their own [God] in doubtful matters. So [says] Origen.