4“Uncontrolled as water, you shall not have preeminence,
         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 swords are implements of violence.

6“Let my soul not enter into their council;
         Let not my glory be united with their assembly;
         Because in their anger they slew men,
         And in their self-will they lamed oxen.

7“Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce;
         And their wrath, for it is cruel.
         I will disperse 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 to you.

9“Judah is a lion’s whelp;
         From the prey, my son, you have gone up.
         He couches, he lies down as a lion,
         And as a lion, who dares rouse him up?

10“The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
         Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
         Until Shiloh comes,
         And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.

11“He ties his foal to the vine,
         And his donkey’s colt to the choice vine;
         He washes his garments in wine,
         And his robes in the blood of grapes.

12“His eyes are dull from wine,
         And his teeth white from milk.

13“Zebulun will dwell at the seashore;
         And he shall be a haven for ships,
         And his flank shall be toward Sidon.

14“Issachar is a strong donkey,
         Lying down between the sheepfolds.

15“When he saw that a resting place was good
         And that the land was pleasant,
         He bowed his shoulder to bear burdens,
         And became a slave at forced labor.

16“Dan shall judge his people,
         As one of the tribes of Israel.

17“Dan shall be a serpent in the way,
         A horned snake in the path,
         That bites the horse’s heels,
         So that his rider falls backward.

18“For Your salvation I wait, O LORD.

19“As for Gad, raiders shall raid him,
         But he will raid at their heels.

20“As for Asher, his food shall be rich,
         And he will yield royal dainties.

21“Naphtali is a doe let loose,
         He gives beautiful words.

22“Joseph is a fruitful bough,
         A fruitful bough by a spring;
         Its branches run over a wall.

23“The archers bitterly attacked him,
         And shot at him and harassed him;

24But his bow remained firm,
         And his arms 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 helps you,
         And by the Almighty who blesses you
         With blessings of heaven above,
         Blessings of the deep that lies beneath,
         Blessings of the breasts and of the womb.

26“The blessings of your father
         Have surpassed the blessings of my ancestors
         Up to the utmost bound of the everlasting hills;
         May they be on the head of Joseph,
         And on the crown of the head of the one distinguished among his brothers.

27“Benjamin is a ravenous wolf;
         In the morning he devours the prey,
         And in the evening he divides the spoil.”

      28All these are the twelve tribes of Israel, and this is what their father said to them when he blessed them. He blessed them, every one with the blessing appropriate to him. 29Then he charged them and said to them, “I am about to be gathered to 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 along with the field from Ephron the Hittite for a burial site. 31“There they buried Abraham and his wife Sarah, there they buried Isaac and his wife Rebekah, and there I buried Leah— 32the field and the cave that is in it, purchased from the sons of Heth.” 33When Jacob finished charging his sons, he drew his feet into the bed and breathed his last, and was gathered to his people.

NASB ©1995

American Standard Version
Boiling over as water, thou shalt not have the pre-eminence; Because thou wentest up to thy father's bed; Then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch.

Douay-Rheims Bible
Thou art poured out as water, grow thou not: because thou wentest up to thy father's bed, and didst defile his couch.

Darby Bible Translation
Impetuous as the waters, thou shalt have no pre-eminence; Because thou wentest up to thy father's couch: Then defiledst thou it: he went up to my bed.

English Revised Version
Unstable as water, thou shalt not have the excellency; Because thou wentest up to thy father's bed: Then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch.

Webster's Bible Translation
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.

World English Bible
Boiling over as water, you shall not excel; because you went up to your father's bed, then defiled it. He went up to my couch.

Young's Literal Translation
Unstable as water, thou art not abundant; For thou hast gone up thy father's bed; Then thou hast polluted: My couch he went up!The Shepherd, the Stone of Israel
'... The mighty God of Jacob. From thence is the Shepherd, the stone of Israel.'--GENESIS xlix. 24. A slight alteration in the rendering will probably bring out the meaning of these words more correctly. The last two clauses should perhaps not be read as a separate sentence. Striking out the supplement 'is,' and letting the previous sentence run on to the end of the verse, we get a series of names of God, in apposition with each other, as the sources of the strength promised to the arms of the hands …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Joseph Attacked by the Archers
Joseph is dead, but the Lord has his Josephs now. There are some still who understand by experience--and that is the best kind of understanding--the meaning of this passage, "The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him; but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob." There are four things for us to consider this morning. First of all, the cruel attack--"the archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 1: 1855

Instability
Now, my brethren, if it be so in earthly things, it is so also in spiritual. Instability in religion is a thing which every man despises, although every man has, to a degree, the evil in himself, but stability in the firm profession and practice of godliness, will always win respect, even from the worldly, and certainly will not be forgotten by him whose smile is honor and whose praise is glory, even the great Lord and Master, before whom we stand or fall. I have many characters here to-day whom …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 3: 1857

The Messianic Prophecies in the Pentateuch.
In the Messianic prophecies contained in Genesis we cannot fail to perceive a remarkable progress in clearness and definiteness. The first Messianic prediction, which was uttered immediately after the fall of Adam, is also the most indefinite. Opposed to the awful threatening there stands the consolatory promise, that the dominion of sin, and of the evil arising from sin, shall not last for ever, but that the seed of the woman shall, at some future time, overthrow their dreaded conqueror. With the …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Balaam's Prophecy. (Numb. xxiv. 17-19. )
Carried by the Spirit into the far distant future, Balaam sees here how a star goeth out of Jacob and a sceptre riseth out of Israel, and how this sceptre smiteth Moab, by whose enmity the Seer had been brought from a distant region for the destruction of Israel. And not Moab only shall be smitten, but its southern neighbour, Edom, too shall be subdued, whose hatred against Israel had already been prefigured in its ancestor, and had now begun to display Itself; and In general, all the enemies of …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Bunsen's Biblical Researches.
When geologists began to ask whether changes in the earth's structure might be explained by causes still in operation, they did not disprove the possibility of great convulsions, but they lessened necessity for imagining them. So, if a theologian has his eyes opened to the Divine energy as continuous and omnipresent, he lessens the sharp contrast of epochs in Revelation, but need not assume that the stream has never varied in its flow. Devotion raises time present into the sacredness of the past; …
Frederick Temple—Essays and Reviews: The Education of the World

Appendix viii. Rabbinic Traditions About Elijah, the Forerunner of the Messiah
To complete the evidence, presented in the text, as to the essential difference between the teaching of the ancient Synagogue about the Forerunner of the Messiah' and the history and mission of John the Baptist, as described in the New Testaments, we subjoin a full, though condensed, account of the earlier Rabbinic traditions about Elijah. Opinions differ as to the descent and birthplace of Elijah. According to some, he was from the land of Gilead (Bemid. R. 14), and of the tribe of Gad (Tanch. on …
Alfred Edersheim—The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah

His Throat is Most Sweet, Yea, He is Altogether Lovely. This is My Beloved, and this is My Friend, O Daughters of Jerusalem.
The good qualities of ordinary things may be sufficiently well expressed by ordinary phrases of commendation, but there are some subjects so above expression that they can only be worthily admired by declaring them above all praise. Such is the Divine Bridegroom, who, by the excess of His perfections, renders His Bride dumb when she endeavors most worthily to praise Him, that all hearts and minds may be attracted to Him. Her passion causes her to burst out into the praise of some of the excellencies …
Madame Guyon—Song of Songs of Solomon

The Debt of Irenæus to Justin Martyr
If we are to proceed with safety in forming a judgment as to the relation between Justin and Irenæus in respect of the matter which they have in common, it will be necessary not merely to consider a number of selected parallels, but also to examine the treatment of a particular theme in the two writers. Let us set side by side, for example, c. 32 of Justin's First Apology with c. 57 of the Demonstration. Justin has been explaining to his Roman readers who the Jewish prophets were, and then …
Irenæus—The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching

'Fruit which is Death'
'Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself: according to the multitude of his fruit he hath increased the altars; according to the goodness of his land they have made goodly images. 2. Their heart is divided; now shall they be found faulty: He shall break down their altars, He shall spoil their images. 3. For now they shall say, We have no king, because we feared not the Lord; what then should a king do to us? 4. They have spoken words, swearing falsely in making a covenant: thus …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Blessing of Jacob Upon Judah. (Gen. Xlix. 8-10. )
Ver. 8. "Judah, thou, thy brethren shall praise thee; thy hand shall be on the neck of thine enemies; before thee shall bow down the sons of thy father. Ver. 9. A lion's whelp is Judah; from the prey, my son, thou goest up; he stoopeth down, he coucheth as a lion, and as a full-grown lion, who shall rouse him up? Ver. 10. The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and unto Him the people shall adhere." Thus does dying Jacob, in announcing …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

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