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LXX Deuteronomy

Septuagint

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Chapter 18

1 The priests, the Levites, even the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no part nor inheritance with Israel; the burnt offerings of the Lord are their inheritance, they shall eat them. 2 And they shall have no inheritance among their brothers; the Lord himself is his portion, as he said to him. 3 And this is the due of the priests in the things coming from the people from those who offer sacrifices, whether it be a calf or a sheep; and he shall give the shoulder to the priest, and the cheeks, and the great intestine: 4 and the first fruits of your grain, and of your wine, and of your oil; and you shall give to him the first fruits of the fleeces of your sheep:⁠ 5 because the Lord your God has chosen him out of all your tribes, to stand before the Lord your God, to minister and bless in his name, himself and his sons among the children of Israel. 6 And if a Levite come from one of your cities of all the children of Israel, where he himself dwells, accordingly as his mind desires, to the place which the Lord shall have chosen, 7 he shall minister to the name of the Lord his God, as all his brothers the Levites, who stand there present before the Lord. 8 He shall eat an allotted portion, besides the sale of his hereditary property. 9 And when you shall have entered into the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to do according to the abominations of those nations. 10 There shall not be found in you one who purges his son or his daughter with fire, one who uses divination, who deals with omens, and augury, a sorcerer,⁠ 11 one employing incantation, one who has in him a divining spirit, an observer of signs, questioning the dead. 12 For every one that does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God; for because of these abominations the Lord will destroy them from before your face. 13 You shall be perfect before the Lord your God. 14 For all these nations whose land you shall inherit, they will listen to omens and divinations; but the Lord your God has not permitted you so to do. 15 The Lord your God shall raise up to you a prophet of your brothers, like me; you shall listen to him: 16 according to all things which you desired of the Lord your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, We will not again hear the voice of the Lord our God, and we will not any more see this great fire, and so we shall not die. 17 And the Lord said to me, They have spoken rightly all that they have said. 18 I will raise up to them a prophet of their brothers, like you;⁠ and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them as I shall command him. 19 And whatever man shall not listen to whatever words that prophet shall speak in my name,⁠ I will take vengeance on him. 20 But the prophet whoever shall impiously speak in my name a word which I have not commanded him to speak, and whoever shall speak in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. 21 But if you shall say in your heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken? 22 Whatever words that prophet shall speak in the name of the Lord, and they shall not come true, and not come to pass, this is the thing which the Lord has not spoken; that prophet has spoken wickedly: you shall not spare him.

Texts in conversation

Compare LXX Deuteronomy 18:10 and Acts 16:16

Septuagint · New Testament

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Summary

Acts 16 introduces a slave girl who tells fortunes, and her language and actions echo Deuteronomy 18, which forbids that practice. Acts likely uses Deuteronomy to shape this narrative and present it as fulfilling Israel's traditions.

Passages

LXX Deuteronomy 18:10

Septuagint
9 And when you shall have entered into the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to do according to the abominations of those nations. 10 There shall not be found in you one who purges his son or his daughter with fire, one who uses divination, who deals with omens, and augury, a sorcerer, 11 one employing incantation, one who has in him a divining spirit, an observer of signs, questioning the dead.
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Deuteronomy

Acts 16:16

New Testament
15 After she and her household were baptized, she urged us, “If you consider me to be a believer in the Lord, come and stay in my house.” And she persuaded us. 16 Now as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave girl met us who had a spirit that enabled her to foretell the future by supernatural means. She brought her owners a great profit by fortune-telling. 17 She followed behind Paul and us and kept crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.”
70–90 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Acts

References

"... The negative overtones of the group can, however, be defined with greater specificity; to be precise, they consist at least partly of the impression that the mantic activities in question cannot be trusted to provide reliable information. Connotations of deceptiveness and unreliability cling to it, for instance, in eleven of its twelve occurrences in the LXX; one of these eleven, moreover, is Deuteronomy 18:10, which the author of Luke - Acts not only knew but was conspicuously fond of. In this light, associations with falsehood should almost certainly be inferred from Acts 16:16 as well, so that anything the slave-girl says in this context ought to be suspected of deceitful intent. Thus, when she is cited directly afterwards as describing the missionaries as heralds, her meaning is most probably ‘a way of salvation’, the implications of which flatly contradict the position of the narrator and heroes of Luke–Acts. Indeed, as the implications of this phrase stand at odds not only with the soteriology of the implied author but also with Jewish monotheism, Paul’s annoyance at the girl can be seen from a Jewish perspective as not merely excusable but exemplary ..."
Todd Klutz, The Exorcism Stories in Luke–Acts: A Sociostylistic Reading (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 225–226.

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

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LXX Deuteronomy 18:10 and Acts 16:16

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