¹⁰Don’t let anyone among you offer a son or daughter as a sacrifice in the fire. Don’t let anyone use magic or witchcraft, or try to explain the meaning of signs. ¹¹Don’t let anyone try to control others with magic, and don’t let them be mediums or try to talk with the spirits of dead people. ¹²The Lord hates anyone who does these things. Because the other nations do these things, the Lord your God will force them out of the land ahead of you. ¹³But you must be innocent in the presence of the Lord your God.

The Lord’s Special Prophet

¹⁴The nations you will force out listen to people who use magic and witchcraft, but the Lord your God will not let you do those things. ¹⁵The Lord your God will give you a prophet like me, who is one of your own people. Listen to him. ¹⁶This is what you asked the Lord your God to do when you were gathered at Mount Sinai. You said, “Don’t make us listen to the voice of the Lord our God again, and don’t make us look at this terrible fire anymore, or we will die.”

¹⁷So the Lord said to me, “What they have said is good. ¹⁸So I will give them a prophet like you, who is one of their own people. I will tell him what to say, and he will tell them everything I command. ¹⁹This prophet will speak for me; anyone who does not listen when he speaks will answer to me. ²⁰But if a prophet says something I did not tell him to say as though he were speaking for me, or if a prophet speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must be killed.”

²¹You might be thinking, “How can we know if a message is not from the Lord?” ²²If what a prophet says in the name of the Lord does not happen, it is not the Lord’s message. That prophet was speaking his own ideas. Don’t be afraid of him.

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