The priests that are of Levi’s race, having no part or lot of their own such as the rest of Israel have, will share the burnt-sacrifices and offerings that are brought to the Lord,

that is all the claim they have upon the revenues of their fellow-Israelites; has not the Lord told them that he is to be all their portion?

When the whole people or some one Israelite offers sacrifice, be the victim ox or sheep, the priests can claim the gift of shoulder and maw;✻

they can claim the first-fruits, too, of corn, and wine, and oil, and part of the wool that is brought in at sheep-shearing.

Out of all thy tribes, the Lord has chosen Levi and his children to stand up and minister in the Lord’s name for ever.

If a Levite gives up his home in any city of Israel, for love of the place the Lord has chosen, and comes to dwell there instead,

he shall have a right to minister in the name of the Lord his God among the rest of his Levite brethren who then wait on the Lord’s presence,

and to receive the same portion of food as the others, the sale of his patrimony notwithstanding.✻

When thou reachest the land which the Lord thy God means to give thee, take good care not to imitate the abominable ways of the men who dwell there.

None must be found among you to consecrate son or daughter by making them pass through the fire, to consult soothsayers, or keep watch for dream-revelations and omens; there must be no wizard,

or enchanter, none who consults familiar spirits and divinations, and would receive warnings from the dead.

All such things are hateful to the Lord; it is to punish them for such evil doings that he means to destroy these nations at thy onslaught.

Thine to stand before the Lord thy God perfect and unreproved;

let them listen to soothsayer and diviner, these other nations thou wilt dispossess; not such is the schooling thou hast received from the Lord thy God.

No, the Lord thy God will raise up for thee a prophet like myself, of thy own race, a brother of thy own; it is to him thou must listen.✻

Was it not thy own plea, that day when all were publicly assembled at mount Horeb, that thou mightest hear the voice of the Lord thy God no longer, have sight of that raging fire no longer, lest it should be thy death?

And the Lord told me, All that they have said is well said.

I will raise up for them a prophet like thyself, one of their own race, entrusting my own message to his lips, so that he may instruct them at my bidding.

Whoever refuses obedience to these commands which he gives in my name, shall feel my vengeance.

If anyone is so presumptuous as to prophesy in my name when I have given him no message to deliver, or prophesy in the name of alien gods, his life must pay for it.

Perhaps thy unspoken thought would ask, how thou shouldst recognize those messages which do not come from the Lord?

I will give thee a test; If the prophet foretells something in the Lord’s name, and it does not come about, this was no message from the Lord; it was the prophet’s vain conceit that imagined it; let no word of his strike terror into thee.