Deuteronomy 18

1 “The priests, the Levites — the whole tribe of Levi — are to have no part or inheritance with Israel. The offerings of the Lord are their inheritance; they are to eat them. 2 And they are to have no inheritance among their brothers; the Lord himself is his portion, as he told him. 3 And this is what is due to the priests from the people, from those who bring a sacrifice, whether a calf or a sheep: you are to give the priest the shoulder, and the jaws, and the stomach; [a] 4 and the first fruits of your grain and of your wine and of your oil; and you are to give him the first of the wool of your sheep — 5 because the Lord your God has chosen him out of all your tribes to stand before the Lord your God, to serve and to bless in his name, him and his sons among the children of Israel. 6 And if a Levite comes from one of the towns of all Israel, wherever he lives, whenever he wants, to the place the Lord chooses, 7 he is to serve in the name of the Lord his God, like all his brothers the Levites who stand there before the Lord. 8 He is to eat an equal share, apart from whatever he gets from selling his family property.

9 And when you have come into the land the Lord your God is giving you, you are not to learn to do the detestable things those nations do. 10 There is not to be found among you anyone who purifies his son or his daughter by fire, or who practices divination, or who reads signs, or who reads omens, or a sorcerer, [b] 11 or one who chants a spell, or a medium, or one who reads portents, or one who questions the dead. [c] 12 For everyone who does these things is a detestable thing to the Lord your God; it is because of these detestable things that the Lord is destroying them from in front of you. 13 You are to be whole before the Lord your God. 14 For all these nations whose land you are taking listen to omens and to divinations, but the Lord your God has not allowed you to do so.

15 The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers, like me. Him you are to listen to — 16 just as you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘We will not hear the voice of the Lord our God again, and we will not see this great fire any more, or we will die.’ 17 And the Lord said to me: They have spoken rightly, everything they have said to you. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet from among their brothers, like you; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he will speak to them everything I command him. 19 And any man who does not listen to the words that prophet speaks in my name — I will take it out of him. [d] 20 But the prophet who dares to speak in my name a word I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods — that prophet is to die. 21 And if you say in your heart, ‘How are we to know the word the Lord has not spoken?’ — 22 whatever words that prophet speaks in the name of the Lord and they do not come true and do not happen, that is the thing the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken wickedly; do not spare him.”