Deuteronomy 18
A Prophet Like Me — Listen to Him
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Provision for the Priests and Levites
18:1The Levitical priests, the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no share or allotment with Israel. The Lord’s offerings are their allotment; they shall eat them.
18:2They shall have no allotment among their brothers; the Lord Himself is his allotment, as He told him.
18:3This is the priests’ entitlement from the people, from those slaughtering the sacrifices, whether a calf or a sheep: they shall give the priest the arm, the jawbones, and the stomach.
18:4Give him the firstfruits of your grain, wine, and oil, and the first of your sheep’s fleece.
18:5For the Lord your God has chosen him from all your tribes to stand before the Lord your God, to minister and bless in His name, he and his sons among the Israelites.
18:6If a Levite comes from one of your cities, from among all the Israelites where he resides, as his soul desires, to the place the Lord will choose,
18:7then he shall minister in the name of the Lord his God, like all his fellow Levites standing there before the Lord.
18:8He shall eat an allotted share, apart from the sale associated with his ancestral family.
Forbidden Practices and Wicked Customs
18:9If you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to practice the abominations of those nations.
18:10No one shall be found among you who purifies his son or daughter by fire, practices divination, interprets spoken omens or augury, or performs sorcery,
18:11chants spells, acts as a spirit-medium or observer of portents, or questions the dead.
18:12For everyone who does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God, and because of these abominations the Lord will destroy them from before you.
18:13Be perfect before the Lord your God.
18:14For these nations you are inheriting will listen to omens and divinations; but the Lord your God has not permitted this for you.
The Prophet Like Moses and False Prophets
18:15The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. Listen to him,
18:16in accordance with all you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying: We will not hear the voice of the Lord our God again or see this great fire anymore, so that we do not die.
18:17The Lord said to me: Everything they have said is right.
18:18I will raise up for them a prophet like you from their brothers. I will put My word in his mouth, and he shall speak to them as I command him.
18:19As for anyone who will not listen to what the prophet speaks in My name, I will exact retribution from him.
18:20But the prophet who acts impiously by speaking in My name a word I did not order him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.
18:21If you say in your heart: How can we recognize the word the Lord has not spoken?
18:22Whatever a prophet speaks in the Lord’s name, if the word does not happen or come to pass, that is a word the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken impiously; you shall not spare him.
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Saints Translation · Liturgical reading edition · V1 · working draft awaiting specialist review.