God Calls Abram

12:1-9

12 Then Yahweh said to Abram, “You yourself must go from your land and from your relatives and from the house of your father, to the land that I will show you.

2 And I will make you into a great nation,

and I will bless you,

and I will make your name great,

and you must be a blessing.

3 And I will bless those who bless you,

but whoever curses you I will curse.

And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

4 Then Abram went, just as Yahweh had told him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was the son of seventy-five years when he departed from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot the son of his brother and all their possessions that they had accumulated and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. Then they came to the land of Canaan. 6 Then Abram passed through the land as far as the place of Shechem, to the terebinth tree of Moreh. And the Canaanites were in the land at that time. 7 Then Yahweh appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to Yahweh, who had appeared to him.

8 Then from there he went on to the mountains to the east of Bethel and pitched his tents, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to Yahweh, and he called on the name of Yahweh. 9 Then Abram set out and continued to travel toward the Negev.