Provision for Priests and Levites

18 “The Levitical priests, all the tribe of Levi, ^(A)shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel. They ^(B)shall eat the Lord's food offerings^[a] as their^[b] inheritance. ² They shall have no inheritance among their brothers; the Lord is their inheritance, as he promised them. ³ And this shall be the priests' due from the people, from those offering a sacrifice, whether an ox or a sheep: ^(C)they shall give to the priest the shoulder and the two cheeks and the stomach. ^4 (D)The firstfruits of your grain, of your wine and of your oil, and the first fleece of your sheep, you shall give him. ⁵ For the Lord your God has chosen him out of all your tribes ^(E)to stand and minister in the name of the Lord, him and his sons for all time.

⁶ “And if a Levite comes from any of your towns out of all Israel, ^(F)where he lives—and he may come when he desires^[c]—^(G)to the place that the Lord will choose, ⁷ and ministers in the name of the Lord his God, ^(H)like all his fellow Levites who stand to minister there before the Lord, ⁸ then he may have equal ^(I)portions to eat, besides what he receives from the sale of his patrimony.^[d]

Abominable Practices

⁹ “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, ^(J)you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. ¹⁰ There shall not be found among you anyone ^(K)who burns his son or his daughter as an offering,^[e] anyone who ^(L)practices divination or ^(M)tells fortunes or interprets omens, or ^(N)a sorcerer ¹¹ or a charmer or ^(O)a medium or a necromancer or ^(P)one who inquires of the dead, ^12 (Q)for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And ^(R)because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. ¹³ You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, ¹⁴ for 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.

A New Prophet like Moses

^15 (S)“The 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— ¹⁶ just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb ^(T)on the day of the assembly, when you said, ^(U)‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ ¹⁷ And the Lord said to me, ^(V)‘They are right in what they have spoken. ^18 (W)I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. ^(X)And I will put my words in his mouth, and ^(Y)he shall speak to them all that I command him. ^19 (Z)And whoever will ^(AA)not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. ^20 (AB)But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or^[f] who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ ²¹ And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’— ^22 (AC)when 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; ^(AD)the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.