Propohets Replaced Diviners

 Derashos HaRan (12) "When you come to the land which the L-rd your G-d has given you, do not learn to do according to the abominations of those nations. Let there not be found among you one who passes his son or daughter through fire, a diviner… For these nations which you shall inherit heed the soothsayers and diviners, but the L-rd your G-d has not rendered you thus… I shall raise up a prophet…" It is seen, then, that the idea of the prophet is to suppress those arts and to outdo them. And this was, indeed, effected in the beginning of the prophesying of the faithful prophet Moses. At that time, the magicians and soothsayers were humbled and suppressed. And it was a Divine stratagem to have all of this transpire in the very hotbed of necromancy Egypt, where the grandeur of his signs would be more clearly discriminated than in a land devoid of such arts. This is the intent of: "Yochni and Mamre said to Moses: 'Are you bringing straw to Ofraim, the city of straw!' He answered: 'People say: "Take greens to the place of greens."' The meaning is as follows: Yochni and Mamre assumed that these signs displayed by the faithful prophet were produced through the agency of those stratagems common to necromancy. They, therefore, took him to task for deceiving the people according to their wretched minds) in the midst of a land full of such trickery. And Moses countered: "People say: 'Take greens to the place of greens.'" That is, the excellence of one who is perfect in something cannot be recognized except in a place where that thing is present to a certain extent. By way of analogy, if one possesses the most excellent of greens, he will be more apt to sell them in a city where there is an abundance of greens and where their relative superiority would, in consequence, be more easily recognized. This was precisely Moses' situation. We find, then, that the prophet outdoes all that the diviners do, and with a greater degree of perfection. For just as the diviner foretells matters affecting the individual, so does the prophet. Therefore, when the Torah interdicted these occult arts, prophecy was provided as a replacement.