Genesis 49King James Version
Jacob calls all twelve sons to his bedside and gives each one a blessing that is also a prophecy about what their tribes will become. Reuben loses his birthright. Simeon and Levi are scattered for their violence. Judah will hold the scepter. Joseph is a fruitful bough by a well. Benjamin is a ravening wolf. Then Jacob draws his feet up into the bed and dies.
Jacob gathers his twelve sons and speaks a prophetic poem over each one. Some are blessings, some are rebukes, some are mixed. Reuben loses the birthright for sleeping with Bilhah. Simeon and Levi are scattered for the massacre at Shechem. Judah receives the scepter and the obedience of nations. Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Issachar get shorter words. Joseph gets an extended blessing of abundance. Benjamin is a ravenous wolf. Jacob asks to be buried at Machpelah and dies.
A dying man speaks the futures of twelve nations in a single session: the blessing and the curse both run in the family line, and Judah's word about the coming king echoes from here to Revelation.
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." The most messianic verse in Genesis, read by Jewish tradition as pointing to the Messiah and by Christian tradition as pointing to Jesus.
Deathbed blessings were legally and ritually significant in the ancient world. Jacob is 147 years old. He has been ill enough that Joseph was summoned. He gathers strength for this speech and then, immediately after finishing, draws his feet into the bed and dies. The speech is the last thing he has to do. Machpelah, where he asks to be buried, is the cave Abraham purchased from Ephron, where Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, and Rebekah are already buried.
Jacob, speaking as a patriarch and a prophet; the twelve sons, each receiving a word; Leah and Zilpah and Bilhah and Rachel's children distributed across the poem.
Jacob's deathbed poem is a theological history of Israel in advance. The tribes he describes match the later roles of those tribes in Israel's history: Judah producing the royal line, Levi scattered as priests and teachers throughout Israel, Issachar working the land. The poem was likely used liturgically. It anchors tribal identity to patriarchal blessing.
For when you are watching someone speak their last real words and they are using them to see each person clearly. Jacob does not give soft final blessings. He tells the truth, including the hard parts, to each son before he goes.
1And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days.
2Gather yourselves together, and hear, ye sons of Jacob; and hearken unto Israel your father.
3Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power:
4Unstable 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.
5Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations.
6O 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.
7Cursed 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.
8Judah, 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.
9Judah 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?
10The 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.
11Binding 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:
12His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk.
13Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea; and he shall be for an haven of ships; and his border shall be unto Zidon.
14Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens:
15And 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.
16Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel.
17Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward.
18I have waited for thy salvation, O LORD.
19Gad, a troop shall overcome him: but he shall overcome at the last.
20Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties.
21Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words.
22Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall:
23The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him:
24But 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:)
25Even 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:
26The 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.
27Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.
28All 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.
29And 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,
30In 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.
31There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah.
32The purchase of the field and of the cave that is therein was from the children of Heth.
33And 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.