1“The Levite priests, all the tribe of Levi, shall not have a portion and legacy with Israel. They shall eat YHWH’s offerings by fire and His legacy.
2But he shall not have a legacy among his brothers. YHWH: He is his legacy, as He spoke to him.
3And this shall be the rule for the priests from the people, from those who make a sacrifice, whether an ox or a sheep: he shall give the shoulder, the cheeks, and the stomach.
4You shall give him the first of your grain, your wine, and your oil, and the first shearing of your sheep.
5Because YHWH, your God, has chosen him from all your tribes to stand to serve in YHWH’s name, he and his sons, for all time.
6“And when a Levite will come from one of your gates, from all of Israel, where he lives, then he shall come as much as his soul desires to the place that YHWH will choose
7and serve in the name of YHWH, his God, like all of his Levite brothers who are standing there in front of YHWH.
8They shall eat, portion for portion, aside from his sales of patrimony.
18:8. portion for portion. Any Levite who comes to serve at the central place of worship is supposed to receive the same share of the priestly food as every other Levite. And this share is not affected by whether he has any other income from family property, i.e., “from his sales of patrimony.”
9“When you come to the land that YHWH, your God, is giving you, you shall not learn to do like the offensive things of those nations.
10There shall not be found among you someone who passes his son or his daughter through fire, one who practices enchantment, a soothsayer or a diviner or a sorcerer
11or one who casts spells or who asks of a ghost or of a spirit of an acquaintance or inquires of the dead,
12because everyone who does these is an offensive thing of YHWH, and because of these offensive things YHWH, your God, is dispossessing them from in front of you.
13You shall be unblemished with YHWH, your God,
18:13. unblemished. This word is the mark of the recipients of the first two covenants with God. It is the word that is used to describe the merit of Noah; and God tells Abraham to be unblemished as well in the opening words of the covenant (Gen 6:9; 17:1). (The only other person in the Tanak to be described by these words is Job.) Now all the people of Israel are recipients of the third covenant, and so all of them are instructed to be like Noah and Abraham. They may receive the covenant initially on the merit of Abraham, but they must maintain it on their own integrity.
14because these nations whom you are dispossessing listen to soothsayers and enchanters, but you: YHWH, your God, has not permitted such for you.
15YHWH, your God, will raise up for you a prophet from among you, from your brothers, like me. You shall listen to him—
18:15. God will raise up a prophet like me. But the end of the Torah says: “A prophet did not rise again in Israel like Moses” (Deut 34:10)! Still, this need not be a contradiction. The context of the passage here in Deuteronomy 18 is that Israel should not listen to soothsayers and enchanters, but only to a prophet from God, a “prophet like me.” Moses reminds the people that this is what they asked for at Sinai: that they not hear God’s voice directly anymore, but that they hear from God only through prophets. The passage at the end of the Torah visibly means that no other prophet was as great as Moses. It is simply a linguistic matter: the range of the expression “to be like someone” is wide enough to have these two meanings (and several more).
16in accordance with everything that you asked from YHWH, your God, at Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not continue to hear the voice of YHWH, my God, and let me not see this big fire anymore, so I won’t die!’
17“And YHWH said to me, ‘They’ve been good in what they’ve spoken.
18I’ll raise up a prophet for them from among their brothers, like you, and I’ll put my words in his mouth, and he’ll speak to them everything that I’ll command him.
18:18. God will raise up a prophet like me. But the end of the Torah says: “A prophet did not rise again in Israel like Moses” (Deut 34:10)! Still, this need not be a contradiction. The context of the passage here in Deuteronomy 18 is that Israel should not listen to soothsayers and enchanters, but only to a prophet from God, a “prophet like me.” Moses reminds the people that this is what they asked for at Sinai: that they not hear God’s voice directly anymore, but that they hear from God only through prophets. The passage at the end of the Torah visibly means that no other prophet was as great as Moses. It is simply a linguistic matter: the range of the expression “to be like someone” is wide enough to have these two meanings (and several more).
19And it will be: the man who won’t listen to my words that he’ll speak in my name, I shall require it from him!
20Just: the prophet who will presume to speak a thing in my name that I didn’t command him to speak, and who will speak in the name of other gods—that prophet shall die.’
21“And if you’ll say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the thing, that YHWH didn’t speak it?!’—
18:21. How shall we know. It is one of the Bible’s central and most difficult questions: How does one tell a true prophet from a false one? Moses tells the people that the way to tell a false prophet is by seeing whether his prophecy comes true or not. But that is a little late, is it not? The question was how to know at the time of the prophecy whether it is from God. Moses’ instruction appears to mean that one should go by the prophet’s past record. Even then, people’s inclination seems to be to disbelieve the true prophets. Even after Jeremiah’s prophecies of Jerusalem’s fall come to pass (and the prophecies of those who oppose him fail), as soon as he gives a prophecy that the people do not like they say, “You’re speaking a lie. YHWH hasn’t sent you” (Jer 43:2)! So Moses’ criterion for identifying false prophets may seem simple and obvious, but the psychological point is that people miss the obvious and turn instead to the comfortable.
22when the prophet will speak in YHWH’s name, and the thing won’t be and won’t come to pass: that is the thing that YHWH did not say. The prophet spoke it presumptuously. You shall not be fearful of him.
