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Privileges of Priests and Levites

The levitical priests, the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no allotment or inheritance within Israel. They may eat the sacrifices that are the L ord’s portion ²but they shall have no inheritance among the other members of the community; the L ord is their inheritance, as he promised them.

³ This shall be the priests’ due from the people, from those offering a sacrifice, whether an ox or a sheep: they shall give to the priest the shoulder, the two jowls, and the stomach. ⁴The first fruits of your grain, your wine, and your oil, as well as the first of the fleece of your sheep, you shall give him. ⁵For the L ord your God has chosen Levi out of all your tribes, to stand and minister in the name of the L ord, him and his sons for all time.

⁶ If a Levite leaves any of your towns, from wherever he has been residing in Israel, and comes to the place that the L ord will choose (and he may come whenever he wishes), ⁷then he may minister in the name of the L ord his God, like all his fellow-Levites who stand to minister there before the L ord. ⁸They shall have equal portions to eat, even though they have income from the sale of family possessions.

Child-Sacrifice, Divination, and Magic Prohibited

⁹ When you come into the land that the L ord your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. ¹⁰No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, ¹¹or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. ¹²For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the L ord; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the L ord your God is driving them out before you. ¹³You must remain completely loyal to the L ord your God. ¹⁴Although these nations that you are about to dispossess do give heed to soothsayers and diviners, as for you, the L ord your God does not permit you to do so.

A New Prophet Like Moses

¹⁵ The L ord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet. ¹⁶This is what you requested of the L ord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said: “If I hear the voice of the L ord my God any more, or ever again see this great fire, I will die.” ¹⁷Then the L ord replied to me: “They are right in what they have said. ¹⁸I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command. ¹⁹Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable. ²⁰But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak—that prophet shall die.” ²¹You may say to yourself, “How can we recognize a word that the L ord has not spoken?” ²²If a prophet speaks in the name of the L ord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the L ord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

21. And if thou say in thy heart. This exception has reference to the prohibition, which we have already noticed in this same chapter. God, in His appointment of Prophets to be His substitutes in teaching the people, had invested them with no common authority, enjoining obedience to be paid to their precepts. But those, upon whom the office of teaching is conferred, do not alwayduly fulfill it; and hence the doubt naturally arises, how the people shall determine when they are addressed as by Gods mouth, so as to distinguish the true from the false. There is, therefore, no question expressed in words, but God anticipates the secret scruples which might otherwise keep men’s minds in suspense; for to “say in the heart” is equivalent to doubting in one’s self when any danger is perceived. Now, to remove this difficulty, He does not enumerate all the marks of distinction; because He does not indeed allude to doctrine, but only to prophecies. But, speaking popularly, as to evil and ignorant persons, He commands them to observe whether those, who pretend to the name of Prophet, foretell the truth. But although, as we have lately seen, false teachers also rival in this respect the servants of God, and are found to be veracious in some particular prophecy; yet it is sufficient as the touchstone of their truth, to set down what happens for the most part, (ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ;) just as God himself chooses to be distinguished and separated from idols by the same test. Nor does Moses affirmatively pronounce that credit must be given to prophets, whenever events correspond with their predictions; but only admonishes them, that, if they consider attentively, they cannot be deceived, because God will speedily expose the false prophets to ridicule, and will confound their folly. Thus Jeremiah prudently accommodates this passage to the circumstances of his own times, in order that it may be manifested how rashly and falsely Hananiah spoke in promising impunity for those sins over which God’s vengeance impended. (Jeremiah 28:6.) In sum, Moses means nothing more than that the people would not be exposed to the danger of going astray, if they endeavored heartily to obey God; because it would come to pass by His just judgment, that the temerity of all who have falsely abused His holy name should be made to appear, and thus they should be unmasked.

22. The prophet hath spoken it presumptuously. He not only condemns the folly and vanity of those who advance their own inventions in the place of God’s commands, but also their arrogance; since doubtless, this is impious and intolerable audacity, to set forth the offspring of man’s earthly brain as if it were a divine revelation. And on this ground it is that their impiety is detestable, who fill the air with the fumes of their revelations in order to alarm the simple. Wherefore, he adds, that they should “not be afraid” of such a prophet; because, as nothing can be more arrogant than the ministers of Satan, they confidently utter their boastings, by which we may be easily moved and even overwhelmed, unless we had this buckler to protect us, viz., that their terrific noise may be safely despised. This doctrine is now-a-days very useful for us. We know how insolently the Papists boast of the Catholic Church; of the Apostolic See; how fiercely they rage in Peter’s name; how impetuously they fulminate their curses and anathemas; but, when it is ascertained that whatever they put forward as revelations of the Spirit are but the empty figments of men, it will be easy to dispel those terrors which flow from this same fountain of presumption.