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Provision for Priests and Levites

¹ The Levitical priests—indeed, the entire tribe of Levi—will have no allotment or inheritance with Israel; they may eat the burnt offerings of the Lord and of his inheritance. ² They will have no inheritance in the midst of their fellow Israelites; the Lord alone is their inheritance, just as he had told them. ³ This shall be the priests' fair allotment from the people who offer sacrifices, whether bull or sheep—they must give to the priest the shoulder, the jowls, and the stomach. ⁴ You must give them the best of your grain, new wine, and olive oil, as well as the best of your wool when you shear your flocks. ⁵ For the Lord your God has chosen them and their sons from all your tribes to stand and serve in his name permanently. ⁶ Suppose a Levite comes by his own free will from one of your villages, from any part of Israel where he is living, to the place the Lord chooses ⁷ and serves in the name of the Lord his God like his fellow Levites who stand there before the Lord. ⁸ He must eat the same share they do, despite any profits he may gain from the sale of his family's inheritance.

Provision for Prophetism

⁹ When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, you must not learn the abhorrent practices of those nations. ¹⁰ There must never be found among you anyone who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, anyone who practices divination, an omen reader, a soothsayer, a sorcerer, ¹¹ one who casts spells, one who conjures up spirits, a practitioner of the occult, or a necromancer. ¹² Whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord and because of these detestable things the Lord your God is about to drive them out from before you. ¹³ You must be blameless before the Lord your God. ¹⁴ Those nations that you are about to dispossess listen to omen readers and diviners, but the Lord your God has not given you permission to do such things.

¹⁵ The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you—from your fellow Israelites; you must listen to him. ¹⁶ This accords with what happened at Horeb in the day of the assembly. You asked the Lord your God: "Please do not make us hear the voice of the Lord our God any more or see this great fire any more lest we die." ¹⁷ The Lord then said to me, "What they have said is good. ¹⁸ I will raise up a prophet like you for them from among their fellow Israelites. I will put my words in his mouth and he will speak to them whatever I command. ¹⁹ I will personally hold responsible anyone who then pays no attention to the words that prophet speaks in my name.

²⁰ "But if any prophet presumes to speak anything in my name that I have not authorized him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die. ²¹ Now if you say to yourselves, ‘How can we tell that a message is not from the Lord?'— ²² whenever a prophet speaks in my name and the prediction is not fulfilled, then I have not spoken it; the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him."