Through My Bible Yr 01 – May 03

The Inheritance of the Levites

Deuteronomy 18

¹ The priests, who are Levites, as well as the whole tribe of Levi, will not have any allotted inheritance with Israel. They will eat from the offerings made to the Lord by fire, ^[1] which is their inheritance.

² So they will not have an inheritance among their brothers. The Lord is their inheritance, as he promised them.

³ This then will be the prescribed allotment for the priests from the people who offer sacrifices, whether an ox or a sheep: They are to give to the priests the shoulder, both cheeks, and the stomach. ⁴ You are also to give them the firstfruits from your grain, your new wine, your fresh oil, and the first fleece from your flock. ⁵ For the Lord your God has chosen them from all of your tribes to stand in service in the name of the Lord—them and their sons for all time.

⁶ When a Levite comes from any of your towns throughout Israel where he resides, and whenever he follows his heart’s desire and comes to the place that the Lord will choose, ⁷ and he serves in the name of the Lord your God, standing there before the Lord like all of his fellow Levites, ⁸ then he may eat the same portion, regardless of any income he received from selling family property.

⁹ When you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to practice anything like the abominations of those nations. ¹⁰ Let no one be found among you who makes his son or his daughter pass through fire, or who uses divination, or who engages in fortune telling, or who observes omens, or who practices witchcraft, ¹¹ or who casts a magic spell, or who consults a ghost or a familiar spirit, or who inquires of the dead. ^[2]

¹² Anyone doing these things is detestable to the Lord, and because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving them out before you.

¹³ You are to be blameless with the Lord your God.

¹⁴ It is true that those nations whose land you are taking listen to fortune tellers and diviners, but the Lord your God has not permitted you to do things like that.

The Prophet

¹⁵ The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brother Israelites. Listen to him.

¹⁶ That is exactly what you asked from the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly. You said, “Do not let me hear the voice of the Lord my God anymore, and do not let me see this great fire again, or I will die.”

¹⁷ Then the Lord said to me, “They have done well by saying what they said. ¹⁸ I will raise up a prophet for them from among their brothers, like you, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he will speak to them everything that I command him. ¹⁹ Anyone who will not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account. ²⁰ Any prophet who presumes to speak something in my name that I have not commanded him to speak or who speaks something in the name of other gods—that prophet shall die.”

²¹ What if you ask yourselves, “How can we know that the Lord has not spoken that word?” ²² If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, and the thing does not come about and does not come true, the Lord has not spoken that word. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him. ^[3]

Cities of Refuge

Deuteronomy 19

¹ When the Lord your God has cut down the nations whose land the Lord your God is giving you, and you have taken possession of their land and settled in their cities and houses, ² set aside three cities within the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. ³ Prepare roads ^[4] for yourselves, and divide the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance into three parts, so that anyone who has killed a person will be able to flee to one of these cities.

⁴ Now this is an example of a person who has killed someone who may flee there and live: someone who has struck down his friend unintentionally, without being hateful toward him beforehand. ⁵ For instance, someone goes with his friend into the forest to cut down trees, and when his hand swings the ax to cut down the tree, the iron ax head slips off the wooden handle and strikes his friend, who then dies—that person may flee to one of these cities and live.

⁶ Otherwise, the avenger of blood might pursue the one who has killed someone, because the avenger is hot with anger. Then because of the long distance to the city of refuge, the avenger may overtake the man and strike him down fatally. His death would not be just, because he had not been hateful toward the other one beforehand. ⁷ Therefore I am commanding you this: Set aside for yourselves three cities.

⁸ When the Lord your God expands your territory, as he swore to your fathers, and he gives you the entire land that he promised to give your fathers, ⁹ if you carefully keep this whole set of commands that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God and by walking in his ways always, then add for yourselves three more cities in addition to these three. ¹⁰ Then innocent blood will not be poured out within your land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, nor will you be guilty of bloodshed.

¹¹ But if there is a person who is hateful toward another, and he lies in ambush for him and springs up on him and strikes him so he dies, and the killer flees to one of the cities of God, ¹² then the elders of his home city are to send for him and take him from there. They are to hand him over to the avenger of blood, and he is to be put to death.

¹³ Your eye is not to look with compassion on him. You are to purge the blood of the innocent person from Israel so that it may go well for you.

Miscellaneous Laws

¹⁴ Do not move your neighbor’s boundary marker, which the first generation of occupants set up as a boundary for your inherited property in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.

¹⁵ A single witness does not have legal standing to convict a person of any guilt or sin in connection with any wrongful action he may have committed. A case is to have standing only on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

¹⁶ If a malicious witness rises up against a person to testify against him about a legal offense, ¹⁷ and if the two people involved in the dispute stand before the Lord and before the priests and the judges who preside at that time, ¹⁸ the judges are to investigate diligently. If the person is a dishonest witness because he has falsely accused his brother, ¹⁹ then you are to do to him just as he had plotted to do to his brother. So you will purge the evil from among you. ²⁰ The rest of the people will hear, and they will fear, and they will not do an evil thing like this among you again. ²¹ Your eye is not to look with compassion. The principle is life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.