¹Jacob summoned his sons and said, "Gather yourselves, and let me tell you what will encounter you in the latter end of the days."

²Gather together and hear, O children of Jacob; and listen to Israel your father.

³Reuben, you are my firstborn, my strength and the beginning of my vigor, the excellence of dignity and the excellence of power.

⁴Bubbling over like water, you shall not excel; for you went up onto the beds of your father; then you profaned my couch — he went up.

⁵Simeon and Levi are brothers; their swords are tools of violence.

⁶In their secret let not my being come; in their company let not my weightiness join; for in their anger they killed a man, and in their pleasure they hamstrung an ox.

⁷Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is hard; I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.

⁸Judah, you: your brothers will praise you. Your hand will be on the neck of your enemies; the sons of your father will bow down to you.

⁹A cub of a lion is Judah; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He crouched, he lay down like a lion, like a lioness—who will rouse him?

¹⁰The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to him belongs the obedience of the peoples.

¹¹Yoking his foal to the vine, and the son of his she-donkey to the vine-stock, he washed his garment in wine and his robe in the blood of grapes.

¹²His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.

¹³Zebulun will settle at the seacoast of the seas; and he will be a seacoast for ships, and his flank will be beside Sidon.

¹⁴Issachar is a strong donkey, crouching between the two stalls.

¹⁵He saw that a resting place was good, and that the land was pleasant; and he bent his shoulder to carry a load, and became a worker in forced labor.

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

¹⁷Let Dan be a snake on the road, a horned snake on the path, the one that bites the horse's heels, so that its rider falls backward.

¹⁸For your deliverance I wait, Yahweh.

¹⁹Gad, a marauding band will raid him, but he will raid at the heel.

²⁰From Asher, his food will be rich; and he will give the delicacies of a king.

²¹Naphtali is a doe let loose, who gives words of beauty.

²²A fruitful son is Joseph, a fruitful son by a spring; daughters climb over the wall.

²³They showed bitterness to him, and they shot, and harbored a grudge against him, the lords of arrows.

²⁴But his bow remained steady, and the arms of his hands were agile, from the hands of the mighty one of Jacob — from there is the shepherd, the stone of Israel —

²⁵From the God of your father, who will help you, and Almighty, who will bless you: blessings of the skies from above, blessings of the deep crouching beneath, blessings of the breasts and womb.

²⁶The blessings of your father have prevailed over the blessings of those who conceived me, to the limit of the hills of forever; let them be for the head of Joseph, and for the crown of the consecrated one of his brothers.

²⁷Benjamin is a wolf who tears to pieces; in the morning he eats prey, and at evening he divides plunder.

²⁸All these are the tribes of Israel, twelve; and this is what their father spoke to them, and he blessed them; each according to his own blessing he blessed them.

²⁹He commanded them, and said to them, "I am to be gathered to my people; inter me with my fathers, in the cavern which is in the field of Ephron the Hittite,

³⁰in the cavern which is in the field of Machpelah, which lies before the face of Mamre in the land of Canaan, which Abraham acquired, the field from Ephron the Hittite, as a possession for a grave.

³¹There they interred Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they interred Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I interred Leah —

³²the acquisition of the field and the cavern which is in it, from the children of Heth."

³³Jacob finished commanding his sons, and gathered his feet into the bed, and breathed out, and was gathered to his people.