Textus Receptus Bibles
Coverdale Bible 1535
| 49:1 | And Iacob called his sonnes, & sayde: Gather you, yt I maie tell you, what shal happen vnto you in ye last times: |
| 49:2 | Come together, and heare ye childre of Iacob: Herken vnto Israel youre father. |
| 49:3 | Rube my first sonne, thou art my power and the begynnynge of my strength, chefe in gouernaunce, & chefe in auctorite. |
| 49:4 | Thou passest forth swiftly as ye water. Thou shalt not be the chefest: For thou hast clymmed vp vpon thy fathers bed, euen than defyledest thou my couch with goynge vp. |
| 49:5 | Symeon and Leui brethren, their deedly weapens are perlous instrumentes. |
| 49:6 | In to their secretes come not my soule, and my worshipe be not ioyned with their congregacion: for in their wrath they slew a man, and in their selfwyll they houghed an oxe. |
| 49:7 | Cursed be their wrath, because it is so fearce: and their indignacion, because it is so rigorous. I wil deuyde them in Iacob, and scater them in Israel |
| 49:8 | Iuda, thou art he. Thy brethren shall prayse the: for thy hade shal be in thine enemies neck: thy fathers children shall stoupe vnto the. |
| 49:9 | Iuda is a yonge lyon, thou art come vp hye my sonne, fro the spoyle. He kneled downe and couched himself as a lyon & as a lionesse: who wil rayse him vp? |
| 49:10 | The cepter shal not be remoued fro Iuda, ner a master fro his fete, tyll the Worthye come, and vnto him shal the people fall. |
| 49:11 | He shall bynde his foale vnto the vyne, and his Asses colte to ye noble braunch. He shal wash his garment in wyne, and his mantell in the bloude of grapes. |
| 49:12 | His eyes are roudier then wyne, and his teth whyter then mylck. |
| 49:13 | Zabulon shal dwell in the hauen of the see, and in the porte of shippes, and shal border vpon Sydon. |
| 49:14 | Isachar shal be a stronge Asse, & laye him downe betwixte ye borders. |
| 49:15 | And he saw rest, that it was good, and the lande, that it was pleasaunt. And bowed downe his shulder to beare, and became a seruaut vnto trybute. |
| 49:16 | Dan shal be iudge in his people, as well as a trybe in Israel. |
| 49:17 | Dan shalbe a serpent in the waye, and an edder in the path, and byte the horse in the heles, that his ryder maye fall backwarde. |
| 49:18 | LORDE I loke for thy saluacion. |
| 49:19 | As for Gad, a wapened hoost of men shal fall violently vpon him, but he shall hurte them in the hele. |
| 49:20 | Of Asser cometh his fat bred, and he shal geue delicates vnto kynges. |
| 49:21 | Nepthali is a swift hynde, and geueth goodly wordes. |
| 49:22 | The fruteful sonne Ioseph, that florishinge sonne to loke vpon, the doughters go vpo the wall. |
| 49:23 | And though the shoters angered him, stroue with him, and hated him, |
| 49:24 | yet his bowe bode fast, and the armes of his hades were made stroge by the handes of ye Mightie in Iacob. Of him are come herdmen & stones in Israel. |
| 49:25 | Of yi fathers God art thou helped, & of the Allmightie art thou blessed, wt blessynges of heauen from aboue, with blessinges of ye depe yt lyeth vnder, with blessynges of brestes & wombes. |
| 49:26 | The blessinges promised vnto thy father and my fore elders go mightely, after the desyre of the hyest in the worlde: these shal light on Iosephs heade, and on the toppe of his heade, that was separate from his brethren. |
| 49:27 | Ben Iamin, a rauyshinge wolfe. In the mornynge shal he deuoure the praye, but in the euenynge he shal deuyde the spoyle. |
| 49:28 | All these are the twolue trybes of Israel: and this is it that their father spake vnto them, whan he blessed them, euery one with a sundrye blessynge. |
| 49:29 | And he commaunded them, and sayde vnto them: I shal be gathered vnto my people, burye me with my fathers in ye caue which is in the felde of Ephron the Hethite, |
| 49:30 | in the dubble caue that lyeth ouer against Mamre in ye lande of Canaa, which Abraha bought with the felde, of Ephron the Hethite for a possession to burye in. |
| 49:31 | There buryed they Abraha & Sara his wife, there buried they Isaac also & Rebecca his wife: & their buried I Lea, |
| 49:32 | in the good of the felde & of the caue therin, which was bought of the Hethites. |
| 49:33 | And whan Iacob had ended this commaundement vnto his children, he pluckte his fete together vpon the bed, and died, and was gathered vnto his people. |
Coverdale Bible 1535
The Coverdale Bible, compiled by Myles Coverdale and published in 1535, was the first complete English translation of the Bible to contain both the Old and New Testament and translated from the original Hebrew and Greek. The later editions (folio and quarto) published in 1539 were the first complete Bibles printed in England. The 1539 folio edition carried the royal license and was, therefore, the first officially approved Bible translation in English.
Tyndale never had the satisfaction of completing his English Bible; but during his imprisonment, he may have learned that a complete translation, based largely upon his own, had actually been produced. The credit for this achievement, the first complete printed English Bible, is due to Miles Coverdale (1488-1569), afterward bishop of Exeter (1551-1553).
The details of its production are obscure. Coverdale met Tyndale in Hamburg, Germany in 1529, and is said to have assisted him in the translation of the Pentateuch. His own work was done under the patronage of Oliver Cromwell, who was anxious for the publication of an English Bible; and it was no doubt forwarded by the action of Convocation, which, under Archbishop Cranmer's leading, had petitioned in 1534 for the undertaking of such a work.
Coverdale's Bible was probably printed by Froschover in Zurich, Switzerland and was published at the end of 1535, with a dedication to Henry VIII. By this time, the conditions were more favorable to a Protestant Bible than they had been in 1525. Henry had finally broken with the Pope and had committed himself to the principle of an English Bible. Coverdale's work was accordingly tolerated by authority, and when the second edition of it appeared in 1537 (printed by an English printer, Nycolson of Southwark), it bore on its title-page the words, "Set forth with the King's most gracious license." In licensing Coverdale's translation, King Henry probably did not know how far he was sanctioning the work of Tyndale, which he had previously condemned.
In the New Testament, in particular, Tyndale's version is the basis of Coverdale's, and to a somewhat less extent this is also the case in the Pentateuch and Jonah; but Coverdale revised the work of his predecessor with the help of the Zurich German Bible of Zwingli and others (1524-1529), a Latin version by Pagninus, the Vulgate, and Luther. In his preface, he explicitly disclaims originality as a translator, and there is no sign that he made any noticeable use of the Greek and Hebrew; but he used the available Latin, German, and English versions with judgment. In the parts of the Old Testament which Tyndale had not published he appears to have translated mainly from the Zurich Bible. [Coverdale's Bible of 1535 was reprinted by Bagster, 1838.]
In one respect Coverdale's Bible was groundbreaking, namely, in the arrangement of the books of the. It is to Tyndale's example, no doubt, that the action of Coverdale is due. His Bible is divided into six parts -- (1) Pentateuch; (2) Joshua -- Esther; (3) Job -- "Solomon's Balettes" (i.e. Canticles); (4) Prophets; (5) "Apocrypha, the books and treatises which among the fathers of old are not reckoned to be of like authority with the other books of the Bible, neither are they found in the canon of the Hebrew"; (6) the New Testament. This represents the view generally taken by the Reformers, both in Germany and in England, and so far as concerns the English Bible, Coverdale's example was decisive.