Our Father Provides for His Priests
18 1 Levite priests—the whole tribe of Levi—get no portion or inheritance with Israel; they eat the food offerings to our Father—his inheritance. 2 They shall have no inheritance among their brothers; our Father is their inheritance, as he promised them. 3 This is the priests' right from the people: those sacrificing an ox or sheep must give the priest the shoulder, both cheeks, and the stomach. 4 Give him the first of your grain, new wine, and oil, and the first fleece of your sheep. 5 For your Father chose him from all your tribes to stand and serve in the name of our Father, him and his sons, always.
6 If a Levite leaves any of your towns in Israel where he lives and comes whenever he desires to the place our Father will choose, 7 Then he may serve in our Father's name, like all his fellow Levites who stand there before our Father. 8 He shall eat equal portions, besides what he receives from the sale of his family possessions.
The Father Forbids Occult Practices
9 When you enter the land your Father is giving you, don't learn to imitate those nations' detestable practices. 10 No one among you may burn his son or daughter in the fire, practice divination, tell fortunes, read omens, or cast spells, 11 a caster of spells, a medium, a spiritist, or one who consults the dead. 12 For whoever does these things is detestable to our Father; because of these detestable practices, your Father is driving them out before you. 13 You shall be blameless before your Father. 14 As for these nations you will dispossess — they listen to fortune-tellers and diviners. Your Father has not permitted this to you.
The Father Will Send a Prophet
15 Your Father will raise up a prophet like me for you, from among you, from your brothers—listen to him. a a v15 Peter and Stephen name Jesus as the Prophet our Father promised to raise up—the one every Israelite was to listen to (Acts 3:22-23; Acts 7:37). 16 This is what you asked of your Father at Horeb on the day of the assembly: 'Let me not hear our Father's voice again, nor see this great fire anymore, or I will die.'
17 And our Father said to me, "They are right in what they have spoken." 18 I will raise up a prophet like you for them, from among their brothers. I'll put my words in his mouth; he will tell them all I command him. 19 Whoever doesn't listen to my words he speaks in my name—I myself will hold him accountable. 20 But the prophet who dares speak in my name a word I did not command, or speaks in the name of other gods—that prophet must die.
21 And if you say in your heart, 'How can we know the word our Father hasn't spoken?' 22 When a prophet speaks in our Father's name and the word doesn't happen or come true, our Father didn't speak it — the prophet spoke in arrogance. Don't fear him.
