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Jacob’s Last Words to His Sons

49Then Jacob called his sons, and said: ‘Gather around, that I may tell you what will happen to you in days to come.
² Assemble and hear, O sons of Jacob;
   listen to Israel your father.

³ ‘Reuben, you are my firstborn,
   my might and the first fruits of my vigour,
   excelling in rank and excelling in power.
⁴ Unstable as water, you shall no longer excel
   because you went up on to your father’s bed;
   then you defiled it—you^* went up on to my couch!

⁵ ‘Simeon and Levi are brothers;
   weapons of violence are their swords.
⁶ May I never come into their council;
   may I not be joined to their company—
for in their anger they killed men,
   and at their whim they hamstrung oxen.
⁷ Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce,
   and their wrath, for it is cruel!
I will divide them in Jacob,
   and scatter them in Israel.

⁸ ‘Judah, your brothers shall praise you;
   your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies;
   your father’s sons shall bow down before you.
⁹ Judah is a lion’s whelp;
   from the prey, my son, you have gone up.
He crouches down, he stretches out like a lion,
   like a lioness—who dares rouse him up?
¹⁰ The sceptre shall not depart from Judah,
   nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until tribute comes to him;^*
   and the obedience of the peoples is his.