Deuteronomy 18:9-22

English Standard Version

Abominable Practices

⁹“When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, ^(A)you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. ¹⁰There shall not be found among you anyone ^(B)who burns his son or his daughter as an offering,^[a] anyone who ^(C)practices divination or ^(D)tells fortunes or interprets omens, or ^(E)a sorcerer ¹¹or a charmer or ^(F)a medium or a necromancer or ^(G)one who inquires of the dead, ¹²^(H)for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And ^(I)because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. ¹³You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, ¹⁴for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.

A New Prophet like Moses

¹⁵^(J)“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— ¹⁶just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb ^(K)on the day of the assembly, when you said, ^(L)‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ ¹⁷And the Lord said to me, ^(M)‘They are right in what they have spoken. ¹⁸^(N)I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. ^(O)And I will put my words in his mouth, and ^(P)he shall speak to them all that I command him. ¹⁹^(Q)And whoever will ^(R)not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. ²⁰^(S)But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or^[b] who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ ²¹And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’— ²²^(T)when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; ^(U)the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.