Deuteronomy — Chapter 18

The levitical priests, the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no territorial portion with Israel. They shall live only off GOD’s offerings by fire as theiratheir Lit. “its,” i.e., the tribe’s. portion,

and shall have no portion among their brother tribes: GOD is their portion, as promised.

This, then, shall be the priests’ due from the people: Everyone who offers a sacrifice, whether an ox or a sheep, must give the shoulder, the cheeks, and the stomach to the priest.

You shall also give him the first fruits of your new grain and wine and oil, and the first shearing of your sheep.

For the ETERNAL your God has chosen him and his descendants, out of all your tribes, to be in attendance for service in the name of GOD for all time.

If a Levite would go, from any of the settlements throughout Israel where he has been residing, to the place that GOD has chosen, he may do so whenever he pleases.

He may serve in the name of the ETERNAL his God like all his fellow Levites who are there in attendance before GOD.

They shall receive equal shares of the dues, without regard to personal gifts or patrimonies.bwithout regard to personal gifts or patrimonies Meaning of Heb. uncertain.

When you enter the land that the ETERNAL your God is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations.

Let no one be found among you who consigns a son or daughter to the fire, or who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviner, a sorcerer,

one who casts spells, or one who consults ghosts or familiar spirits, or one who inquires of the dead.

For anyone who does such things is abhorrent to GOD, and it is because of these abhorrent things that the ETERNAL your God is dispossessing them before you.

You must be wholehearted with the ETERNAL your God.

Those nations that you are about to dispossess do indeed resort to soothsayers and augurs; to you, however, the ETERNAL your God has not assigned the like.

From among your own people, the ETERNAL your God will raise up for you a prophet like myself—whom you shall heed.

This is just what you asked of the ETERNAL your God at Horeb, on the day of the Assembly, saying, “Let me not hear the voice of the ETERNAL my God any longer or see this wondrous fire anymore, lest I die.”

Whereupon GOD said to me, “They have done well in speaking thus.

I will raise up for them from among their own people a prophet like yourself, in whose mouth I will put My words and who will speak to them all that I command;

and anybody who fails to heed the words spoken in My name, I Myself will call to account.

But any prophet who presumes to speak in My name an oracle that I did not command to be uttered, or who speaks in the name of other gods—that prophet shall die.”

And should you ask yourselves, “How can we know that the oracle was not spoken by GOD?”—

if the prophet speaks in GOD’s name and the oracle does not come true, that oracle was not spoken by GOD; the prophet has uttered it presumptuously: do not stand in dread of them.