Genesis
49 And Jacob summoned his sons and said “Come together and I will tell you what shall befall you in future days:
2 Gather and listen, sons of Jacob,
and listen to your father Israel.
3 Reuben, you are my eldest,
my strength, the firstfruit of my powers,
Far forward in prestige, far forward in might—
4* in water-like recklessness go not far!
For you went up on your father’s bed,
there you profaned the couch of joy.
5 Simeon and Levi are brothers,
tools of outrage are their daggers.
6 Do not come into their circle, my soul,
do not unite in their assembly, my mind,
Because in their anger they killed men
and in their wantonness they hamstrung oxen.
7 Cursed their anger, that it was strong,
and their wrath, that it was cruel;
I will divide them in Jacob
and scatter them in Israel.
8 Judah, you your brothers shall praise;
your hand shall be on your enemies’ necks,
your father’s sons shall do reverence to you.
9 Judah is a lion-cub;
from your kill, my son, you have come up;
He lies down, he makes himself comfortable,
like a lion and like a lioness; who will stir him up?
10* Scepter shall not pass away from Judah
nor chieftain’s staff from between his feet
Till He comes whose it is;
and his shall be the obedience of the peoples.
11 Tying his donkey to the grapevine,
his ass to the vine of Sorek grapes,
He has washed his clothing in wine,
his venture in the blood of grapes,
12 Darker of eyes than wine,
whiter of teeth than milk.
14 Issacar is a big-boned donkey
lying down in the fork of the paths;
15 And he saw rest was good
and the country was attractive,
And bent his shoulder to carry loads
and become a slaving corvée.
16 Dan shall pronounce judgment for his people
like any of the tribes of Israel.
17 Be Dan a snake by the road,
a horned viper by the trail,
That bites the pony’s heels
and his rider has fallen backward.
18 For your salvation, Jehovah, I have waited.
20 Asher’s bread shall be fat
and he shall yield kings’ luxuries.
23 Archers had a spite at him
and went to shooting and assailing him;
24*** But their bowstrings were broken
and their arms shook
At the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob,
at the name of the Shepherd of Israel’s Stone,
25 At your father’s Deity; and he shall help you,
El Shaddai, he shall bless you,
With blessings of the skies above,
blessings of the deep that lies prostrate beneath,
blessings of breast and of womb.
26 Your father’s blessings have outgone
the blessings of sempiternal mountains, the cravings of perpetual hills.
Be they for Joseph’s head,
for his brow who among his brothers was devotee.
28 All these are the tribes of Israel, twelve of them; and this is what their father told them and blessed them, blessed them each with his appropriate blessing.
29 And he laid a command on them, and said to them “I am being gathered to my kinsfolk: bury me with my fathers in the cave in Ghephron the Hittite’s field, 30 in the cave in the field of Macpelah in front of Mamre in Canaan, which field Abraham bought from Ghephron the Hittite for a graveyard property. 31 There they buried Abraham and his wife Sarah, there they buried Isaac and his wife Rebekah, and there I buried Leah; 32 the fee-simple of the field and the cave in it is from the sons of Heth.” 33 And Jacob finished laying his commands on his sons, and drew his feet up into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his kinsfolk.