Deuteronomy 18

Provision for Priests and Levites

18“The Levitical priests, all the tribe of Levi, ⁿshall have no portion or inheritance with Israel. They ^oshall eat the Lord’s food offerings¹ as their² inheritance. ²They shall have no inheritance among their brothers; the Lord is their inheritance, as he promised them. ³And this shall be the priests’ due from the people, from those offering a sacrifice, whether an ox or a sheep: ^pthey shall give to the priest the shoulder and the two cheeks and the stomach. ^4qThe firstfruits of your grain, of your wine and of your oil, and the first fleece of your sheep, you shall give him. ⁵For the Lord your God has chosen him out of all your tribes ^rto stand and minister in the name of the Lord, him and his sons for all time.

⁶“And if a Levite comes from any of your towns out of all Israel, ^swhere he lives—and he may come when he desires³—^tto the place that the Lord will choose, ⁷and ministers in the name of the Lord his God, ^ulike all his fellow Levites who stand to minister there before the Lord, ⁸then he may have equal ^vportions to eat, besides what he receives from the sale of his patrimony.⁴

Abominable Practices

⁹“When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, ^wyou shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. ¹⁰There shall not be found among you anyone ^xwho burns his son or his daughter as an offering,⁵ anyone who ^ypractices divination or ^ztells fortunes or interprets omens, or ^aa sorcerer ¹¹or a charmer or ^ba medium or a necromancer or ^cone who inquires of the dead, ^12dfor whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And ^ebecause of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. ¹³You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, ¹⁴for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.

A New Prophet like Moses

^15f“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— ¹⁶just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb ^gon the day of the assembly, when you said, ^h‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ ¹⁷And the Lord said to me, ⁱ‘They are right in what they have spoken. ^18fI will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. ^jAnd I will put my words in his mouth, and ^khe shall speak to them all that I command him. ^19lAnd whoever will ^mnot listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. ²⁰ⁿBut the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or⁶ who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ ²¹And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’— ^22owhen a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; ⁿthe prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.