Genesis 49:4-6

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

⁴But unstable and boiling over like water, you shall ^[a]not excel and have the preeminence [of the firstborn], because you went to your father’s bed; you defiled it—he went to my couch!^(A)

⁵Simeon and Levi are brothers [equally headstrong, deceitful, vindictive, and cruel]; their swords are weapons of violence.^(B)

⁶O my soul, come not into their secret council; unto their assembly let not my honor be united [for I knew nothing of their plot], because in their anger they slew men [an honored man, Shechem, and the Shechemites], and in their self-will they disabled oxen.

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Footnotes

Genesis 49:4 The whole fertile territory once occupied by the tribe of Reuben has long since been deserted by its settled inhabitants and given up to the nomad tribes of the desert. Reuben did “not excel,” and even before Jacob’s death he had lost his “preeminence of the firstborn” (John D. Davis, A Dictionary of the Bible).