The Wilderness Years

For they are not commanded you in vain, but that every one should live in them, and that doing them you may continue a long time in the land whither you are going over the Jordan to possess it.

And the Lord spoke to Moses the same day, saying:

Go up into this mountain Abarim, (that is to say, of passages,) unto mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab over against Jericho: and see the land of Chanaan, which I will deliver to the children of Israel to possess, and die thou in the mountain.

When thou art gone up into it thou shalt be gathered to thy people, as Aaron thy brother died in mount Hor, and was gathered to his people:

Because you trespassed against me in the midst of the children of Israel, at the waters of contradiction, in Cades of the desert of Sin: and you did not sanctify me among the children of Israel.

Thou shalt see the land before thee, which I will give to the children of Israel, but thou shalt not enter into it.

This is the blessing, wherewith the man of God, Moses, blessed the children of Israel, before his death.

And he said: The Lord came from Sinai, and from Seir he rose up to us: he hath appeared from mount Pharan, and with him thousands of saints. In his right hand a fiery law.

He hath loved the people, all the saints are in his hand: and they that approach to his feet, shall receive of his doctrine.

Moses commanded us a law, the inheritance of the multitude of Jacob.

He shall be king with the most right, the princes of the people, being assembled with the tribes of Israel.

Let Ruben live, and not die, and be he small in number.

This is the blessing of Juda. Hear, O Lord, the voice of Juda, and bring him in unto his people: his hands shall fight for him, and he shall be his helper against his enemies.

To Levi also he said: Thy perfection, and thy doctrine be to thy holy man, whom thou hast proved in the temptation, and judged at the waters of contradiction:

Who hath said to his father, and to his mother: I do not know you; and to his brethren: I know you not: and their own children they have not known. These have kept thy word, and observed thy covenant,

Thy judgments, O Jacob, and thy law, O Israel: they shall put incense in thy wrath and holocaust upon thy altar.

Bless, O Lord, his strength, and receive the works of his hands. Strike the backs of his enemies, and let not them that hate him rise.

And to Benjamin he said: The best beloved of the Lord shall dwell confidently in him: as in a bride chamber shall he abide all the day long, and between his shoulders shall be rest.

To Joseph also he said: Of the blessing of the Lord be his land, of the fruits of heaven, and of the dew, and of the deep that lieth beneath.

Of the fruits brought forth by the sun and by the moon.

Of the tops of the ancient mountains, of the fruits of the everlasting hills:

And of the fruits of the earth, and of the fulness thereof. The blessing of him that appeared in the bush, come upon the head of Joseph, and upon the crown of the Nazarite among his brethren.

His beauty as of the firstling of a bullock, his horns as the horns of a rhinoceros: with them shall he push the nations even to the ends of the earth. These are the multitudes of Ephraim and these the thousands of Manasses.

And to Zabulon he said: Rejoice, O Zabulon, in thy going out; and Issachar in thy tabernacles.

They shall call the people to the mountain: there shall they sacrifice the victims of justice. Who shall suck as milk the abundance of the sea, and the hidden treasures of the sands.