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

² Assemble yourselves, and hear, ye sons of Jacob: and hearken to Israel your father.

³ Reuben, thou art my first-born, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellence of dignity, and the excellence 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; to their assembly, my honor, be not thou united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will 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 on the neck of thy enemies: thy father's children shall bow down before thee.

⁹ Judah is a lion's whelp; from the prey, my son, thou hast gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion: who shall rouse him up?

¹⁰ The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh shall come: and to him shall be the gathering of the people.

¹¹ Binding his foal to the vine, and his ass's colt to 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 a haven of ships; and his border shall be to 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 to 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 beneath, blessings of the breasts, and of the womb:

²⁶ The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors to 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 raven as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.

²⁸ All these are the twelve tribes of Israel: and this is it which their father spoke to them, and blessed them; every one according to his blessing he blessed them.

²⁹ And he charged them, and said to them, I am to be gathered to 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 burying-place.

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 in it, was from the children of Heth.

³³ And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he drew his feet into the bed, and expired, and was gathered to his people.

¹ In those days there was no king in Israel: and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for to that day [their] inheritance had not fallen to them among the tribes of Israel.

² The children of Dan sent of their family five men from their whole number, men of valor, from Zorah, and from Eshtaol, to spy out the land, and to search it; and they said to them, "Go, explore the land!" They came to the hill country of Ephraim, to the house of Micah, and lodged there.

³ When they were by the house of Micah, they knew the voice of the young man the Levite; and they turned aside there, and said to him, "Who brought you here? What do you do in this place? What do you have here?"

⁴ He said to them, "Thus and thus has Micah dealt with me, and he has hired me, and I am become his priest."

⁵ They said to him, "Please ask counsel of God, that we may know whether our way which we go shall be prosperous."

⁶ The priest said to them, "Go in peace. Your way in which you Go is before Yahweh."

⁷ Then the five men departed, and came to Laish, and saw the people who were therein, how they lived in security, in the way of the Sidonians, quiet and secure; for there was none in the land, possessing authority, that might put [them] to shame in anything, and they were far from the Sidonians, and had no dealings with any man.

⁸ They came to their brothers to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brothers said to them, "What do you say?"

⁹ They said, "Arise, and let us go up against them; for we have seen the land, and behold, it is very good. Do you stand still? Don't be slothful to go and to enter in to possess the land.

¹⁰ When you go, you shall come to a secure people, and the land is large; for God has given it into your hand, a place where there is no want of anything that is in the earth."

¹¹ There set forth from there of the family of the Danites, out of Zorah and out of Eshtaol, six hundred men girt with weapons of war.

¹² They went up, and encamped in Kiriath Jearim, in Judah: therefore they called that place Mahaneh Dan, to this day; behold, it is behind Kiriath Jearim.

¹³ They passed there to the hill country of Ephraim, and came to the house of Micah.

¹⁴ Then the five men who went to spy out the country of Laish answered, and said to their brothers, "Do you know that there is in these houses an ephod, and teraphim, and an engraved image, and a molten image? Now therefore consider what you have to do."

¹⁵ They turned aside there, and came to the house of the young man the Levite, even to the house of Micah, and asked him of his welfare.

¹⁶ The six hundred men girt with their weapons of war, who were of the children of Dan, stood by the entrance of the gate.

¹⁷ The five men who went to spy out the land went up, and came in there, and took the engraved image, and the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image: and the priest stood by the entrance of the gate with the six hundred men girt with weapons of war.

¹⁸ When these went into Micah's house, and fetched the engraved image, the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image, the priest said to them, "What are you doing?"

¹⁹ They said to him, "Hold your peace, put your hand on your mouth, and go with us, and be to us a father and a priest. Is it better for you to be priest to the house of one man, or to be priest to a tribe and a family in Israel?"

²⁰ The priest's heart was glad, and he took the ephod, and the teraphim, and the engraved image, and went in the midst of the people.

²¹ So they turned and departed, and put the little ones and the livestock and the goods before them.

²² When they were a good way from the house of Micah, the men who were in the houses near to Micah's house were gathered together, and overtook the children of Dan.

²³ They cried to the children of Dan. They turned their faces, and said to Micah, "What ails you, that you come with such a company?"

²⁴ He said, "You have taken away my gods which I made, and the priest, and have gone away, and what more do I have? How then do you say to me, 'What ails you?'"

²⁵ The children of Dan said to him, "Don't let your voice be heard among us, lest angry fellows fall on you, and you lose your life, with the lives of your household."

²⁶ The children of Dan went their way: and when Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he turned and went back to his house.

²⁷ They took that which Micah had made, and the priest whom he had, and came to Laish, to a people quiet and secure, and struck them with the edge of the sword; and they burnt the city with fire.

²⁸ There was no deliverer, because it was far from Sidon, and they had no dealings with any man; and it was in the valley that lies by Beth Rehob. They built the city, and lived therein.

²⁹ They called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born to Israel: however the name of the city was Laish at the first.

³⁰ The children of Dan set up for themselves the engraved image: and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.

³¹ So they set them up Micah's engraved image which he made, all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh.