1 Now, my children, I command you: love Levi, so that you may endure, and do not exalt yourselves against him, or you will be utterly destroyed. 2 For the Lord gave the kingship to me and the priesthood to him, and he set the kingship beneath the priesthood.⁠a 3 To me he gave the things on the earth, and to him the things in the heavens. 4 As heaven is higher than the earth, so the priesthood of God is higher than the earthly kingdom, unless it falls away from the Lord through sin and is dominated by the earthly kingdom. 5 For the angel of the Lord said to me: The Lord chose him rather than you, to draw near to him, to eat at his table, and to offer him the firstfruits of the choicest gifts of the sons of Israel. But you will be king of Jacob. 6 You will be among them like the sea. 7 For just as on the sea the righteous and the unrighteous are tossed about, some taken captive and some enriched, so every kind of person will be in you: some will be made poor and taken captive, and others will grow rich by plundering the possessions of others. 8 For the kings will be like sea monsters. 9 They will swallow people like fish. They will enslave the sons and daughters of free men. They will plunder houses, lands, flocks, and money. They will wrongfully feed the ravens and the cranes with the flesh of many. They will grow worse in evil, lifted up by greed, and there will be false prophets like storms, and they will persecute all the righteous.