Ephod

What it is

An ephod is a garment named in the Hebrew Bible. In the priestly passages it is an apron worn by the High Priest of Israel, the piece onto which the breastplate and its lots are fixed. Other passages use the same word for something else: an object kept at the sanctuary of Nob, or an image that could be carried and questioned. A reader of the Bible therefore meets one word covering a vestment, a container and, in some stories, a cult object. It sits within ancient Israelite priestly ritual and within the practice of divination.

Where it comes from

The description in Exodus, with its gold thread and set stones, is assigned by critical textual scholars to the priestly source and dated later than the other biblical mentions. Scholars suggest this elaborate version grew out of a plainer one, the simple linen ephod of the stories about David and the priests at Nob. The parallel offered is the maniple, a liturgical vestment that began as an ordinary handkerchief. Whether the word first meant a cloth, a pocket or a small image is left open in the scholarship.

How it is done

The ephod was not only put on; it was used to ask questions of God. A person who wanted an answer went to a priest, and the priest took up the ephod. The reply came through the Urim and Thummim, which scholars take to be lots drawn by cleromancy, that is, divination by casting or drawing lots. The Hebrew verb in these passages means to carry, in the hand or on the shoulder, rather than to wear, though some translations render it as wearing. In the apocryphal Lives of the Prophets, divination with the ephod ceases after the death of Zechariah ben Jehoiada.

Tools and materials

The Exodus ephod is woven from fine linen with threads of gold, blue, purple and scarlet, and embroidered in gold. Two shoulder straps fasten at the front with gold rings, and gold chains hold the breastplate, a square of one span, a span being the distance from the little finger tip to the thumb tip of an outstretched hand. Two engraved shoham stones, usually translated onyx, sit on the straps like epaulettes and carry the names of the twelve tribes. A girdle holds the whole together. Tractate Yoma reckons each texture as six threads plus a seventh of gold leaf.

What it is for

In the priestly passages the ephod is part of the High Priest's official dress, the piece onto which the breastplate and its lots are fixed. In the narrative books it answers a different need: getting a response from God. Someone with a question asks a priest for the ephod, and the lots supply the reply. The Talmud adds that wearing the ephod atoned for the sin of idolatry among the Israelites. The apocryphal Lives of the Prophets lists divination by ephod and answers from the Holy of Holies among the gifts the Temple lost.

Who does it

Those who handle the ephod are priests. The Exodus and Leviticus passages assign it to the High Priest as part of his vestments. In the Samuel stories a priest produces it when a question is put to God, and the priests of Nob are identified as men who wore ephods, eighty-five of them. David appears in a linen ephod while dancing before the Ark, and the Levites who carry the Ark are dressed in fine linen as well. No training or rite of appointment for its use is described.

Peoples and places

The ephod belongs to ancient Israel as the biblical text presents it. Israelites and Levites are the groups named around it: Levites carry the Ark in linen, priests at Nob wear ephods, David wears one, and the twelve tribes have their names set on its shoulder stones. What varies is the biblical presentation, from the plain linen ephod of the David and Samuel stories to the gold and dyed vestment of the priestly instructions.

What people believe

Behind the ephod sits a world in which God can be questioned and answers arrive through objects. The Urim and Thummim are the means; one suggestion is that the Hebrew word urim, meaning lights, points to a way of looking rather than of drawing lots, though that remains a proposal. Not every ephod in the Bible is a garment. The one Gideon made from battle gold was worshipped, which makes it a cult image, and Micah's ephod is paired with teraphim, the pair being called pesel and massekah, graven image and molten image. Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews says Gideon's ephod bore the name of Manasseh and was honoured as an idol after his death.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Textual scholars read the ephod passages as layered. The Septuagint lacks the word linen in several places where the Masoretic Text has it, including the ephod of the Nob priests and the girding of David and Samuel, so some take that word as a later editorial gloss. Because the oracular ephod is carried rather than worn, and because the object at Nob had something standing behind it, several scholars conclude it was a container for the lots or a portable image in front of which they were cast. Others propose an image first dressed in linen, with the word later shifting to the image itself.

Compare and confuse

The ephod is closely tied to the priestly breastplate, which rested on it and held the Urim and Thummim, and to the teraphim, the figures it is sometimes listed beside. In the Micah story the Hebrew terms pesel and massekah, graven image and molten image, are applied to the ephod and teraphim alike. The word is not the same as the priestly robe, tunic, sash or turban, which are separate vestments.

Questions people ask about Ephod

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle

• Ephod on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data