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18. Offerings for Priests

¹ The Levitical priests—indeed, the whole tribe of Levi—are to have no allotment or inheritance with Israel. They shall live on the food offerings presented to the LORD, for that is their inheritance. ² They shall have no inheritance among their fellow Israelites; the LORD is their inheritance, as he promised them.

³ This is the share due the priests from the people who sacrifice a bull or a sheep: the shoulder, the internal organs and the meat from the head. ⁴ You are to give them the firstfruits of your grain, new wine and olive oil, and the first wool from the shearing of your sheep, ⁵ for the LORD your God has chosen them and their descendants out of all your tribes to stand and minister in the LORD’s name always.

⁶ If a Levite moves from one of your towns anywhere in Israel where he is living, and comes in all earnestness to the place the LORD will choose, ⁷ he may minister in the name of the LORD his God like all his fellow Levites who serve there in the presence of the LORD. ⁸ He is to share equally in their benefits, even though he has received money from the sale of family possessions.

Occult Practices

⁹ When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. ¹⁰ Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, ¹¹ or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. ¹² Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD; because of these same detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you. ¹³ You must be blameless before the LORD your God.

The Prophet

¹⁴ The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination. But as for you, the LORD your God has not permitted you to do so. 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 For this is what you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the LORD our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.”

¹⁷ The LORD said to me: “What they say is good. ¹⁸ I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. ¹⁹ I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. ²⁰ But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”

²¹ You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?” ²² If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.

17. They have well spoken. Moses relates how this desire of the people was approved by the judgment and the voice of God. Not as if whatever the foolish caprice of men may have urged them absurdly to ask, ought therefore to be immediately granted; but when God’s consent and, so to speak, His vote coincides with it, then whatever He shews to be pleasing to Him ought to stand firm and inviolable. Hence it follows that God, in sending the Prophets, provided for the salvation of men as was most expedient. Moreover, He asserts that when pious teachers arise, who faithfully shew the way of salvation, it is an extraordinary proof of His favor, and He takes to Himself the praise when He repeats it again,²⁹⁶²⁹⁶ S. M. says, in his note on this verse, “Some of the Hebrews understand by that Prophet, Joshua, who succeeded Moses as ruler; others think Jeremiah must be meant, who rebuked the people in the same terms as Moses had done. But Christians who devoutly assert that this passage speaks of Christ, confute the Jews by referring to what is said in the last chap. of Deut., — ‘There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses,’ etc. This passage must be prophetic of some other remarkable Prophet who should not be inferior to Moses, especially as the text says, like thee, ‘that as thou didst deliver the people from corporal bondage, so shall the prophet whom I will raise up for them deliver them from the bondage of sin.’” — W.

“I will raise them up a Prophet.” (Deuteronomy 18:18.)

Thus also Paul teaches, —

“And how shall they preach except they be sent?”
(Romans 10:15.)

The same Apostle, too, bears witness that none will be found sufficient for this office, and that the power of teaching aright is received from God. (2 Corinthians 2:14, and 4:1.) Hence it follows that God, by a certain evidence of His presence, declares His favor towards us as often as He enlightens with the gifts of His Spirit, and raises up faithful and true teachers. Moses afterwards reminds them that God so governs His Church by the hands and the operation of men as not to derogate from Himself; for He retains this as His attribute, to suggest to the mouth, as it were, of His Prophets what they are to say; neither does He permit them to say or advance more than He has commanded. We perceive, then, that pastors were from the first appointed, not that they should themselves rule, or subject the Church to their imaginations, but only to be the organs of the Holy Spirit. And those who in these days usurp a greater power, ought to be altogether deposed from their sacrilegious despotism.