¹ And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days.

² Gather yourselves together, and hear, ye sons of Jacob;
And hearken unto Israel your father.
³ Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength,
The excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power:
⁴ Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel;
Because thou wentest up to thy father’s bed;
Then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch.
⁵ Simeon and Levi are brethren;
Instruments of cruelty are in their habitations.
⁶ O my soul, come not thou into their secret;
Unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united:
For in their anger they slew a man,
And in their selfwill they digged down a wall.
⁷ Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce;
And their wrath, for it was cruel:
I will divide them in Jacob,
And scatter them in Israel.
⁸ Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise:
Thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies;
Thy father’s children shall bow down before thee.
⁹ Judah is a lion’s whelp:
From the prey, my son, thou art gone up:
He stooped down, he couched as a lion,
And as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?
¹⁰ The sceptre shall not depart from Judah,
Nor a lawgiver from between his feet,
Until Shiloh come;
And unto him shall the gathering of the people be.
¹¹ Binding his foal unto the vine,
And his ass’s colt unto the choice vine;
He washed his garments in wine,
And his clothes in the blood of grapes:
¹² His eyes shall be red with wine,
And his teeth white with milk.
¹³ Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea;
And he shall be for an haven of ships;
And his border shall be unto Zidon.
¹⁴ Issachar is a strong ass
Couching down between two burdens:
¹⁵ And he saw that rest was good,
And the land that it was pleasant;
And bowed his shoulder to bear,
And became a servant unto tribute.
¹⁶ Dan shall judge his people,
As one of the tribes of Israel.
¹⁷ Dan shall be a serpent by the way,
An adder in the path,
That biteth the horse heels,
So that his rider shall fall backward.
¹⁸ I have waited for thy salvation, O LORD.
¹⁹ Gad, a troop shall overcome him:
But he shall overcome at the last.
²⁰ Out of Asher his bread shall be fat,
And he shall yield royal dainties.
²¹ Naphtali is a hind let loose:
He giveth goodly words.
²² Joseph is a fruitful bough,
Even a fruitful bough by a well;
Whose branches run over the wall:
²³ The archers have sorely grieved him,
And shot at him, and hated him:
²⁴ But his bow abode in strength,
And the arms of his hands were made strong
By the hands of the mighty God of Jacob;
(From thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel:)
²⁵  Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee;
And by the Almighty, who shall bless thee
With blessings of heaven above,
Blessings of the deep that lieth under,
Blessings of the breasts, and of the womb:
²⁶ The blessings of thy father
Have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors
Unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills:
They shall be on the head of Joseph,
And on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren.
²⁷ Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf:
In the morning he shall devour the prey,
And at night he shall divide the spoil.

Death of Jacob

²⁸ All these are the twelve tribes of Israel: and this is it that their father spake unto them, and blessed them; every one according to his blessing he blessed them. ²⁹ And he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, ³⁰ in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a buryingplace. ³¹ There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah. ³² The purchase of the field and of the cave that is therein was from the children of Heth. ³³ And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people.