ephod: a sacred object of Israelite worship, most often a priestly garment, but in some places a freestanding cult object made of precious metal.
The ephod is one of those biblical words that no single English word can carry, which is why translations almost always keep the original name. It is a thing tied to priests, to worship, and to seeking answers from God, but the texts do not describe it the same way each time, and scholars have argued for over a century about whether they all point to one object or to several different objects that share a name.
In most places the ephod is something a priest wears. At its grandest it is the elaborate vestment of the high priest, woven of gold thread and colored yarn and fine linen, fitted with shoulder pieces, two engraved onyx stones, and rings that hold the pouch (חשׁן) carrying the sacred lots used to seek God's decision. In other places it is far simpler: a plain linen garment that the boy Samuel wears, that marks out the priests, and that David wears while dancing before the ark. Closely tied to the garment is its use in asking God a question: when David wants guidance he says "bring the ephod," and a priest carries it to him, so here it is a portable object used to seek a yes-or-no answer from God.
But a few passages do not fit a garment at all. Gideon makes an ephod out of about forty-three pounds of gold and sets it up in his town, where the people come to worship it. Another man's household ephod sits alongside small household idols, and the prophet Hosea lists ephod and teraphim (תְּרָפִים) among the trappings of a corrupted northern worship. An object that heavy, that is set up and bowed to, cannot be something a person puts on. So the same word covers both a garment worn by priests and a costly cult object that people treated almost like an idol.
Because the texts pull in these different directions, the standard reference works list more than one sense, and the deepest questions about the ephod are really questions about the history of Israel's worship rather than about the dictionary.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether the word names one object whose meaning stretches across these uses, or two or more distinct objects that happen to share a name (a priestly garment versus a freestanding cult image or oracle device).
- contestedOne object at the core, a priestly garment with an oracular function, whose name extends by association to the images it adorns or the shrines it serves.; Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel (1978); Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, Anchor Bible 3 (1991); Carol Meyers, "Ephod," in Anchor Bible Dictionary 2:550
- contestedDistinct objects sharing a name: a garment in some texts and, in others, a freestanding cult image or oracle device.; Theodore C. Foote, "The Ephod," Journal of Biblical Literature 21 (1902); William R. Arnold, Ephod and Ark (1917); Karel van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel (1996)