Go to Related Reading
About this book

Deuteronomy

About this book
Chapter 18

1 The Levitical priests—indeed,⁠ the entire tribe of Levi—will have no allotment or inheritance with Israel; they may eat the burnt offerings of the Lord and of his inheritance. 2 They will have no inheritance in the midst of their fellow Israelites; the Lord alone is their inheritance, just as he had told them. 3 This shall be the priests’ fair allotment from the people who offer sacrifices, whether bull or sheep—they must give to the priest the shoulder, the jowls, and the stomach. 4 You must give them the best of your grain, new wine, and olive oil, as well as the best of your wool when you shear your flocks.⁠ 5 For the Lord your God has chosen them and their sons from all your tribes to stand and serve in his name permanently. 6 Suppose a Levite comes by his own free will from one of your villages, from any part of Israel where he is living, to the place the Lord chooses 7 and serves in the name of the Lord his God like his fellow Levites who stand there before the Lord. 8 He must eat the same share they do, despite any profits he may gain from the sale of his family’s inheritance. 9 When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, you must not learn the abhorrent practices of those nations. 10 There must never be found among you anyone who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire,⁠ anyone who practices divination,⁠ an omen reader, a soothsayer, a sorcerer,⁠ 11 one who casts spells, one who conjures up spirits, a practitioner of the occult, or a necromancer.⁠ 12 Whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord, and because of these detestable things the Lord your God is about to drive them out from before you. 13 You must be blameless before the Lord your God. 14 Those nations that you are about to dispossess listen to omen readers and diviners, but the Lord your God has not given you permission to do such things. 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 This accords with what happened at Horeb in the day of the assembly. You asked the Lord your God: “Please do not make us hear the voice of the Lord our God anymore or see this great fire anymore lest we die.” 17 The Lord then said to me, “What they have said is good. 18 I will raise up a prophet like you⁠ for them from among their fellow Israelites.⁠ I will put my words in his mouth and he will speak to them whatever I command.⁠ 19 I will personally hold responsible anyone who then pays no attention to the words that prophet speaks in my name. 20 “But if any prophet presumes to speak anything in my name that I have not authorized him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die. 21 Now if you say to yourselves, ‘How can we tell that a message is not from the Lord?’— 22 whenever a prophet speaks in my name and the prediction is not fulfilled, then I have not spoken it; the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him.”

Texts in conversation

Compare Deuteronomy 18:10 and 2 Kings 16:3

Hebrew Bible

Share:

Summary

2 Kings 16 describes Ahaz engaging in child sacrifice, violating the covenant requirements from Deuteronomy 18 and adopting the practices of surrounding nations. This language suggests that Ahaz represents the opposite of the Deuteronomistic ideal.

Passages

Deuteronomy 18:10

Hebrew Bible
8 He must eat the same share they do, despite any profits he may gain from the sale of his family’s inheritance. 9 When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, you must not learn the abhorrent practices of those nations. 10 There must never be found among you anyone who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, anyone who practices divination, an omen reader, a soothsayer, a sorcerer, 11 one who casts spells, one who conjures up spirits, a practitioner of the occult, or a necromancer. 12 Whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord, and because of these detestable things the Lord your God is about to drive them out from before you.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

2 Kings 16:3

Hebrew Bible
1 In the seventeenth year of the reign of Pekah son of Remaliah, Jotham’s son Ahaz became king over Judah. 2 Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned for sixteen years in Jerusalem. He did not do what pleased the Lord his God, in contrast to his ancestor David. 3 He followed in the footsteps of the kings of Israel. He passed his son through the fire, a horrible sin practiced by the nations whom the Lord drove out from before the Israelites. 4 He offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree. 5 At that time King Rezin of Syria and King Pekah son of Remaliah of Israel attacked Jerusalem. They besieged Ahaz, but were unable to conquer him.
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in 2 Kings

References

"... For Hezekiah’s purposes, it had been essential to amputate the ancestors, those responsible for the bestowal of rural property on their descendants: they, and they alone, consecrated the possession of land. They stood between Hezekiah and a population herded into fortresses: if Israelites failed to feed their ancestors, the ancestors were condemned to a diet of excrement, one likely to excite their displeasure: if the family left them, too, how could one be gathered to the ancestors, in the clan-sector tomb? The assault on ancestral practices, which survived the jetsam of Hezekiah’s other programs (Deuteronomy 14:1–2; 18:10–14; 26:14; Leviticus 19:31; 20:6), helped justify dissolving the clan sectors – spreading them thin in the systematic resettlement of Judah. It also issued in a proscription on child sacrifice (2 Kings 23:10), a rite quite logically associated with the ancestral cult in Josiah’s time, and possibly earlier (Leviticus 18:21; 20:2–8; Deuteronomy 18:10). Josiah’s suppression of ancestral worship (2 Kings 23, 16) reacts, thus, against the minimal retribalization of Judah under Manasseh and reflects a heightened stridency about deviation from the state cult, now defined as morally normative and radically analeptic rather than as a refinement of the traditional religion ..."
Baruch Halpern, From Gods to God: The Dynamics of Iron Age Cosmologies, ed. Matthew J. Adams (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 407.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

Your feedback

Deuteronomy 18:10 and 2 Kings 16:3

Leave a comment

Your questions and comments are welcome!

Comments

Glossary

Search the Library