Chapter 49

Chapter 49

1 Then Jacob summoned his sons and said, “Gather yourselves together so that I may declare to you what will happen to you in the days to come.

2 Assemble and listen, you sons of Jacob; listen closely to Israel your father.

3 Reuben, you are my firstborn, my strength and the very first fruit of my vigor, preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power.

4 Unstable as water, you will no longer excel, because you went up to your father’s bed; then you defiled it—he went up to my couch!

5 Simeon and Levi are brothers; their weapons are instruments of lawless violence.

6 May my active life-soul never enter their council; may my honor never be joined to their assembly; for in their anger they slaughtered men, and in their self-will they hamstrung oxen.

7 Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their fury, for it is cruel! I will scatter them throughout Jacob and disperse them throughout Israel.

8 Judah, your brothers will praise you; your hand will be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons will bow down before you.

9 Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He crouches, he stretches out like a lion, and like an onwards-stalking lioness—who dares to rouse him?

10 The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to what is his; and to him will be the assembly of peoples.

11 Tying his donkey foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to a premium red grapevine, he washes his garments in wine and his robes in the blood of grapes.

12 His eyes are dark from wine, and his teeth are white from milk.”

13 Zebulun will live by the shore of the seas; he will be a harbor for ships, and his border will extend to Sidon.

14 Issachar is a strong donkey, lying down between two saddlebags.

15 He saw that a resting place was good and that the land was pleasant, so he bent his shoulder to the burden and submitted to forced labor.

16 Dan will vindicate his people as one of the tribes of Israel.

17 Dan will be a snake by the roadside, a viper along the path, that bites the horse's heels so that its rider tumbles backward.

18 I wait with hope for your rescue, O Self-Existent.

19 Gad will be raided by a band of raiders, but he will raid their rear guard.

20 Asher’s food will be rich, and he will produce food fit for kings.

21 Naphtali is a doe set free; he utters beautiful words.

22 Joseph is a fruitful shoot, a fruitful shoot by a water spring; its runners climb over the wall.

23 The archers fiercely attacked him, shot at him, and harbored hostility against him.

24 But his bow remained steady, and his arms were made agile by the hands of the Strong One of Jacob—from there, the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel—

25 by the All-Powerful One of your father who will help you, and by the Almighty Sustainer who will endow you with the power of life—with gifts of the sky above, gifts of the deep that lies beneath, gifts of the breasts and of the womb.

26 The gifts of your father excel the gifts of my ancestors up to the utmost bound of the everlasting hills; they will be on the head of Joseph, on the brow of the prince among his brothers.

27 Benjamin is a predatory wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, and in the evening he divides the spoil.

28 All these are the 12 tribes of Israel, and this is what their father spoke to them when he bestowed the power of life upon them; he bestowed the power of life upon each one according to his own unique allotment.

29 Then he commanded them and said to them, “I am about to be gathered to my people; bury me with my ancestors in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite,

30 in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre in the land of Canaan, which Abraham purchased along with the field from Ephron the Hittite as a permanent burial property.

31 There they buried Abraham and his woman Sarah; there they buried Isaac and his woman Rebekah; and there I buried Leah.

32 The field and the cave within it were purchased from the sons of Heth.

33 When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew his feet up into the bed, breathed his last, and was gathered to his people.