1The Levitical priests, the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel; they shall eat the food offerings of Yahweh, his inheritance.
2He shall have no inheritance among his brothers; Yahweh is his inheritance, as he promised him.
3And this shall be the priests’ due from the people, from those who offer a sacrifice, whether an ox or a sheep: he shall give to the priest the shoulder, the two cheeks, and the stomach.
4The firstfruits of your grain, your new wine, and your fresh oil, and the first of the fleece of your flock you shall give to him.
5For Yahweh your God has chosen him out of all your tribes to stand and minister in the name of Yahweh, he and his sons for all time.
6And if a Levite comes from any of your towns throughout all Israel where he resides, and comes with all the desire of his self to the place that Yahweh will choose,
7then he may minister in the name of Yahweh his God like all his brothers the Levites who stand there before Yahweh.
8They shall eat equal portions, apart from what he receives from the sale of his patrimony.
9When you come into the land that Yahweh your God is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abominations of those nations.
10There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who practices divination, a soothsayer, an augur, a sorcerer,
11one who casts spells, one who consults a medium or a spiritist, or one who inquires of the dead.
12For everyone who does these things is an abomination to Yahweh, and because of these abominations Yahweh your God is dispossessing them before you.
13You shall be blameless before Yahweh your God.
14For these nations that you are dispossessing listen to soothsayers and diviners, but as for you, Yahweh your God has not permitted you to do so.
15Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from among your brothers; to him you shall listen.
16according to all that you asked of Yahweh your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not continue to hear the voice of Yahweh my God, nor see this great fire any longer, so that I will not die.’
17And Yahweh said to me, ‘They have done well 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 it shall be that whoever does not listen to my words that he speaks 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 prophet shall die.
21And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word that Yahweh has not spoken?’—
22when a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh and the word does not come about or come true, that is a word that Yahweh has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You shall not be afraid of him.
Open in the interactive reader →