Deuteronomy18chapter 18

Deuteronomy 18:1-2

Numbers 18:20 said it to Aaron first, I am thy part and thine inheritance among the children of Israel, and Joshua 13:14 and 13:33 record the land being divided with Levi left out of the division. The tribe that handles the offerings holds no ground. Verse 1 puts priests and Levites under one standing, and verse 2 states what they hold as a person rather than a property, the Lord is their inheritance, as he hath said unto them.

Deuteronomy 18:3-5

Leviticus 7:31-34 assigned the priest the wave breast and the heave shoulder from the peace offerings, and the three parts named here, the shoulder and the two cheeks and the maw, do not match that list. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown say outright that whether this is a new injunction or the old one with further detail is hard to determine. Albert Barnes reads the three as head, body and legs, so that a portion of the whole animal reaches the man at the altar. Verse 5 puts the ground of all of it in God choosing him out of all the tribes.

Deuteronomy 18:6-8

The place which the Lord shall choose falls fifteen times between chapters 12 and 26 and this is one of them, and the book never says where it is. A Levite living in his own town may come with all the desire of his mind and serve beside the men on duty, and he eats a like portion with them. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown add that the admission was orderly, a Gershonite serving among Gershonites, so the established courses stood. His patrimony is his own on top of that, and Adam Clarke points to Abiathar at 1 Kings 2:26 and Jeremiah at Jeremiah 32:7-8 as Levites holding property.

Deuteronomy 18:9-11

Nine practices are named and the verb governing them is learn, so what is guarded against is transfer from the neighbours. Albert Barnes reads the list as an attempt to gather every known word for the practices in question, and notes that the necromancer is literally one who interrogates the dead. Leviticus 18:21, 19:31 and 20:27 had already forbidden most of these one at a time. 2 Kings 21:6 and 2 Chronicles 33:6 report Manasseh doing nearly the whole list in Jerusalem, which is this list read back as an indictment.

Deuteronomy 18:12-13

The dispossession is given a stated ground and it is these practices. Genesis 15:16 held the land back until the iniquity of the Amorites was full, and Leviticus 18:24-25 has the land vomiting out her inhabitants for the same class of acts, so three passages give one reason. Verse 13 answers the whole list with a single line, and Albert Barnes reads perfect here as the word used of Abram at Genesis 17:1 and of Job at Job 1:1 and standing behind Matthew 5:48, whole rather than faultless.

Deuteronomy 18:14

The verse says how the nations got their guidance and says Israel is barred from the same means. That opens a question, since every people around them had a way of asking about tomorrow, and verse 15 answers it in the next breath. Matthew Henry treats the two as one movement, the forbidden arts followed at once by the promise of the spirit of prophecy. Saul at 1 Samuel 28:6-7 is the case of a king who found the permitted channel silent and went to a woman with a familiar spirit.

Deuteronomy 18:15-17

The promise is dated to a request. At Horeb the people asked not to hear the voice or see the great fire again, which Exodus 20:18-21 records and Deuteronomy 5:23-28 retells, and verse 17 has God answering that they have well spoken. The office is granted on the people's own terms, a man out of their own brethren standing where the fire stood. Readers divide over whether the singular Prophet covers the line of prophets who followed, or one man, or both; Matthew Henry holds it primarily of Christ while allowing the succession, and Albert Barnes records that the messianic reading was already the standing one among Jews in the first century.

Deuteronomy 18:18-19

will put my words in his mouth: Peter quotes both verses at Acts 3:22-23 and Stephen quotes verse 15 at Acts 7:37, so the application to Jesus is stated in the New Testament rather than inferred from it. The question was live before that, since John 1:21 has priests asking John the Baptist whether he is that prophet, John 6:14 has a crowd saying it of Jesus after the loaves, and John 7:40 has it said again. I will put my words in his mouth is the wording God uses to Jeremiah at Jeremiah 1:9. Verse 19 attaches the sanction, and John Gill records that the Targums render I will require it of him as my Word shall require it.

Deuteronomy 18:20-21

Two offences carry the one penalty, a word spoken presumptuously in the Lord's name and a word spoken in the name of other gods, and chapter 13:1-5 had already handled the second. Verse 21 puts the question from the hearer's side, because the man in the congregation has to judge before the outcome is in. Albert Barnes reads the assumed occasion as a crisis such as a coming battle and points to 1 Kings 22:11, where two prophets give opposite words about the same campaign. Jeremiah 28 is this statute in operation, Hananiah contradicting Jeremiah in the temple and dying that same year.

Deuteronomy 18:22

One test is given here and it is the outcome. Chapter 13:1-3 supplies the other half and runs the opposite way, since a sign that does come to pass is still no warrant when the prophet turns the hearer to other gods, so a word is weighed both against events and against the God it points to. The closing clause addresses fear rather than argument, thou shalt not be afraid of him, which fits a hearer facing a confident man in public. Deuteronomy 34:10 then ends the five books with the line that there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, so the promise of verse 15 stands open where the Torah closes.