18:15 The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you – from your fellow Israelites; 1 you must listen to him. 18:16 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 2 God any more or see this great fire any more lest we die.” 18:17 The Lord then said to me, “What they have said is good. 18:18 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. 18:19 I will personally hold responsible 3 anyone who then pays no attention to the words that prophet 4 speaks in my name.
18:20 “But if any prophet presumes to speak anything in my name that I have not authorized 5 him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die. 18:21 Now if you say to yourselves, 6 ‘How can we tell that a message is not from the Lord?’ 7 – 18:22 whenever a prophet speaks in my 8 name and the prediction 9 is not fulfilled, 10 then I have 11 not spoken it; 12 the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him.”
1 tc The MT expands here on the usual formula by adding “from among you” (cf. Deut 17:15; 18:18; Smr; a number of Greek texts). The expansion seems to be for the purpose of emphasis, i.e., the prophet to come must be not just from Israel but an Israelite by blood.
2 tn The Hebrew text uses the collective singular in this verse: “my God…lest I die.”
3 tn Heb “will seek from him”; NAB “I myself will make him answer for it”; NRSV “will hold accountable.”
4 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the prophet mentioned in v. 18) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
5 tn Or “commanded” (so KJV, NAB, NIV, NRSV).
6 tn Heb “in your heart.”
7 tn Heb “know the word which the Lord has not spoken.” The issue here is not understanding the meaning of the message, but distinguishing a genuine prophetic word from a false one.
8 tn Heb “the
9 tn Heb “the word,” but a predictive word is in view here. Cf. NAB “his oracle.”
10 tn Heb “does not happen or come to pass.”
11 tn Heb “the
12 tn Heb “that is the word which the Lord has not spoken.”