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 Isaiah 47:12

Hebrew Bible

Share:

Summary

Deuteronomy forbids Israel from using foreign divination, and Isaiah echoes this in portraying Babylon as dependent on such practices and becomes a primary explanation for Babylon's downfall.

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

Isaiah 47:12

Hebrew Bible
10 You were complacent in your evil deeds; you thought, ‘No one sees me.’ Your self-professed wisdom and knowledge lead you astray, when you say, ‘I am unique! No one can compare to me!’ 11 Disaster will overtake you; you will not know how to charm it away. Destruction will fall on you; you will not be able to appease it. Calamity will strike you suddenly, before you recognize it. 12 Persist in trusting your amulets and your many incantations, which you have faithfully recited since your youth! Maybe you will be successful—maybe you will scare away disaster. 13 You are tired out from listening to so much advice. Let them take their stand—the ones who see omens in the sky, who gaze at the stars, who make monthly predictions—let them rescue you from the disaster that is about to overtake you! 14 Look, they are like straw that the fire burns up; they cannot rescue themselves from the heat of the flames. There are no coals to warm them, no firelight to enjoy.
740–450 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Isaiah

References

"... On the surface, none of the divinatory techniques practiced in Israel whether licit, illicit, or falling somewhere in between, bear strong resemblances to the Mesopotamian divinatory traditions. Fully legitimate forms include divining by Urim and Thummim (Numbers 27:21; Exodus 28:15-30), ephod (1 Samuel 14:41; 23:6-12) and "inquiring of YHWH" (1 Samuel 14:35-37; 22:10-17; 23:1-12; 30:7-8; 2 Samuel 2:1). Dreams could be a legitimate means of obtaining knowledge (Genesis 28:10-22; Judges 7:13; 1 Samuel 28:6; 1 Kings 3) or they could be misleading and false (Deuteronomy 13:2-6; Jeremiah 29:8). The elusive teraphim, household idols or apotropaic figurines, could also have a divinatory function (Hosea 3:4; Ezekiel 21:21; Zechariah 10). The prohibitions against foreign divination in particular (Leviticus 19:26, 31; 20:6 and Deuteronomy 18:10-11, 14), cannot be clearly identified with or connected in any substantial way to specific Mesopotamian forms. The liver models found at Hazor, Megiddo, Ebla, and Ugarit and the corpus of omen texts recovered from Ugarit clearly attest to a pre-Israelite transmission of Mesopotamian practices to the Levant. While the biblical record preserves clear evidence of familiarity with Mesopotamian practices, there is no biblical corollary to the divinatory texts produced in Mesopotamia. There are a few direct references to Mesopotamian practices (Ezekiel 21:21; Isaiah 47:12-13; Daniel 5:11). Echoes of, or, perhaps, direct references to Mesopotamian texts, find their way into other conceptually very different genres ..."
William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger, eds., The Context of Scripture: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 1:422.

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 Isaiah 47:12

Leave a comment

Your questions and comments are welcome!

Comments

Glossary

Search the Library