The Mishnah reported that with the death of the former prophets, the Urim and Thummim ceased.Mishnah Sotah 9:12, in, e.g., Jacob Neusner, translator, Mishnah, page 464; Babylonian Talmud Sotah 48a, in, e.g., Talmud Bavli: Tractate Sotah: Volume 2, elucidated by Eliezer Herzka, Moshe Zev Einhorn, Michoel Weiner, Dovid Kamenetsky, and Reuvein Dowek, edited by Yisroel Simcha Schorr and Chaim Malinowitz (Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications, 2000), volume 33b, page 48a3. In this connection, the Gemara reported differing views of who the former prophets were. Rav Huna said they were David, Samuel, and Solomon. Rav Nachman said that during the days of David, they were sometimes successful and sometimes not (getting an answer from the Urim and Thummim), for Zadok consulted it and succeeded, while Abiathar consulted it and was not successful, as reports, "And Abiathar went up." (He retired from the priesthood because the Urim and Thummim gave him no reply.) Rabbah bar Samuel asked whether the report of , "And he (King Uzziah of Judah) set himself to seek God all the days of Zechariah, who had understanding in the vision of God," did not refer to the Urim and Thummim. But the Gemara answered that Uzziah did so through Zechariah's prophecy. A Baraita told that when the first Temple was destroyed, the Urim and Thummim ceased, and explained (reporting events after the Jews returned from the Babylonian Captivity), "And the governor said to them that they should not eat of the most holy things till there stood up a priest with Urim and Thummim," as a reference to the remote future, as when one speaks of the time of the Messiah. Rav Nachman concluded that the term "former prophets" referred to a period before Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, who were latter prophets.Babylonian Talmud Sotah 48b, in, e.g., Talmud Bavli: Tractate Sotah: Volume 2, elucidated by Eliezer Herzka et al., volume 33b, pages 48b1–2. And the Jerusalem Talmud taught that the "former prophets" referred to Samuel and David, and thus the Urim and Thummim did not function in the period of the First Temple, either.Jerusalem Talmud Sotah 24b, in, e.g., Talmud Yerushalmi, elucidated by Avrohom Neuberger, Yehuda Jaffa, Mendy Wachsman, Shlomo Silberman, Mordechai Stareshefsky, Gershon Hoffman, edited by Chaim Malinowitz and Yisroel Simcha Schorr (Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications, 2017), volume 36, page 24b.
