Provision for Priests and Levites
1The Levitical priests – indeed, the entire tribe of Levi – will have no allotment or inheritance with Israel; they may eat the burnt offerings of the
2They will have no inheritance in the midst of their fellow Israelites; the
3This shall be the priests’ fair allotment from the people who offer sacrifices, whether bull or sheep – they must give to the priest the shoulder, the jowls, and the stomach.
4You must give them the best of your grain, new wine, and olive oil, as well as the best of your wool when you shear your flocks.
5For the
6Suppose a Levite comes by his own free will from one of your villages, from any part of Israel where he is living, to the place the
7and serves in the name of the
8He must eat the same share they do, despite any profits he may gain from the sale of his family’s inheritance.
Provision for Prophetism
9When you enter the land the
10There must never be found among you anyone who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, anyone who practices divination, an omen reader, a soothsayer, a sorcerer,
11one who casts spells, one who conjures up spirits, a practitioner of the occult, or a necromancer.
12Whoever does these things is abhorrent to the
13You must be blameless before the
14Those nations that you are about to dispossess listen to omen readers and diviners, but the
15The
16This accords with what happened at Horeb in the day of the assembly. You asked the
17The
18I will raise up a prophet like you for them from among their fellow Israelites. I will put my words in his mouth and he will speak to them whatever I command.
19I will personally hold responsible anyone who then pays no attention to the words that prophet speaks in my name.
20“But if any prophet presumes to speak anything in my name that I have not authorized him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die.
21Now if you say to yourselves, ‘How can we tell that a message is not from the
22whenever a prophet speaks in my name and the prediction is not fulfilled, then I have not spoken it; the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him.”
<< Deuteronomy 18 >>
