¹⁵ After you have purified them and offered them as a wave offering, the Levites will go to work at the Tent of Meeting, ¹⁶ because only they are given to me as servants from among the Israelites. In place of every firstborn from the womb, the firstborn of every Israelite, I have taken the Levites for myself. ¹⁷ For all the firstborn among the Israelites are mine, both human and animal. On the day that I struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, I set the firstborn of the Israelites apart for myself.