And Jacob called his sons and said, Gather yourselves together, and I will tell you what will befall you at the end of days.
Assemble yourselves together and hear, ye sons of Jacob, and listen to Israel your father.
Reuben, thou [art] my first-born, my might, and the firstfruits of my vigour, excellency of dignity and excellency of strength.
Bubbling up as the waters, thou shalt have no pre-eminence; because thou wentest up to thy father’s couch: then defiledst thou [it]; he went up to my bed.
Simeon and Levi [are] brethren, weapons of violence their swords.
My soul, come not into their council; mine honour, be not united to their assembly; for in their anger they slew men, and in their self-will houghed oxen.
Cursed [be] their anger, for [it was] fierce, and their rage, for [it was] cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.
Judah, thee will thy brethren praise: thy hand [will be] on the neck of thine enemies; thy father’s children will bow down to thee.
Judah [is] a lion’s whelp. From the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stoopeth, he coucheth as a lion, and as a lioness: who will rouse him up?
The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and to him will be the obedience of peoples.
He bindeth his foal to the vine, and his ass’s colt to the choice vine; he washeth his garments in wine, and his vesture in the blood of grapes;
his eyes [are] red with wine, and his teeth white with milk.
Zebulun shall dwell at the breach of the seas, and he [shall be] for a haven of ships; and his border [shall be] upon Zidon.
Issachar [is] a bony ass, couching between two hurdles;
and he saw rest that [it was] good, and the land that [it was] pleasant; and he bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a tributary servant.
Dan shall judge his people, as another of the tribes of Israel.
Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a horned serpent in the path, that biteth the horse’s heels, so that his rider falleth backward.
I wait for thy salvation, O Jehovah.
Gad—troops shall press upon him; but he shall press upon their heel.
Out of Asher his bread [shall be] fat, and he shall yield royal dainties.
Naphtali [is] a hind let loose; he giveth goodly words.
Joseph [is] a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a fountain; daughters shoot over the wall.
The archers have provoked, and shot at and hated him;
but his bow abideth firm, and the arms of his hands are supple by the hands of the mighty One of Jacob. From thence [is] the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel;
from the God of thy father, he will help thee, and from the Almighty, he will bless thee, with blessings of heaven above, with blessings of the deep that coucheth beneath, with blessings of the breast and of the womb.
The blessings of thy father surpass the blessings of my progenitors unto the bounds of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separated from his brethren.
Benjamin [is] a wolf that raveneth; in the morning he shall devour the prey, and in the evening he shall divide the spoil.
All these [are] the twelve tribes of Israel, and this [is] what their father spake to them; and he blessed them; every one according to his blessing he blessed them.
And he charged them and said to them, I am gathered to my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that [is] in the field of Ephron the Hittite,
in the cave that [is] in the field of Machpelah which [is] opposite to Mamre in the land of Canaan; which Abraham bought of Ephron the Hittite with the field for a possession of a burying-place.
There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebecca his wife; and there I buried Leah.
The purchase of the field, and of the cave that [is] in it, [was] from the children of Heth.
And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered his feet into the bed, and expired, and was gathered to his people.