15 Your god Yahweh will select a man from among you and send him as a prophet like me. You must take notice of him,[ref] 16 since you begged your god Yahweh from the bottom of Mt. Horev when you said, “We can’t handle directly hearing the voice of our god Yahweh and looking at this terrible fire. Let us go home so we won’t die here.” 17 Then Yahweh told me, “They’re right in what they’re saying. 18 I’ll choose a prophet from among them and see him. I’ll tell him what to say, and he can pass it on to them, 19 and if anyone doesn’t listen to what he says with my authority, I’ll punish that person as if they ignored me.[ref] 20 However, if the prophet says things that I didn’t tell him to say but claims they came from me, or if he speaks in the name of other gods, then that prophet must die.”

21 Now if you ask yourselves, “How can we recognise a message that didn’t come from Yahweh?” 22 then when the prophet speaks in Yahweh’s name but that thing doesn’t happen, then you’ll know that it didn’t come from Yahweh. The prophet spoke it assuming that I’d want that, but you don’t need to be afraid of him.