Deuteronomy 18

¹The Levitical priests , all the tribe of Levi , shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel . They shall eat the Lord ’s food offerings as their 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 : they shall give to the priest the shoulder and the two cheeks and the stomach .

⁴The 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 to stand and minister in the name of the Lord, him and his sons for all time .

⁶And if a Levite comes from any of your towns out of all Israel , where he lives —and he may come when he desires — to the place that the Lord will choose ,

⁷and ministers in the name of the Lord his God , like all his fellow Levites who stand to minister there before the Lord,

⁸then he may have portions to eat , besides what he receives from the sale of his patrimony .

⁹When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations .

¹⁰There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering , anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens , or a sorcerer

¹¹or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead ,

¹²for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because 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 .

¹⁵The 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 on the day of the assembly , when you said , 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, They are right in what they have spoken .

¹⁸I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers . And I will put my words in his mouth , and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

¹⁹And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name , I myself will require it of him.

²⁰But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak , or 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 ? —

²²when 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 ; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously . You need not be afraid of him.