God Tells Abram to Move to Canaan

12:1-9

12 One day Yahweh commanded Abram, “You must move away from your homeland and your relatives, including your father’s family, and move to the land that I will guide you to.

2 I will make you and your descendants become an important people group,

and I will cause you all to prosper.

I will make you well-known,

and you and your descendants will bless many people.

3 I will bless everyone who blesses you,

but I will curse anyone who curses you.

I will use you and your descendants

to bless all the people on the earth.”

4 So Abram left the city of Haran exactly as Yahweh had commanded him to do, and his nephew Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left from there. 5 He took with him his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot and everything that they owned, including servants and everything else they had acquired in the city of Haran, and they all started traveling to the region of Canaan. When they arrived there, 6 they traveled through that region as far as the city of Shechem, to Moreh’s oak tree. At that time the Canaanites were still living in that land, 7 but Yahweh came to Abram and said to him, “I will give this land to your descendants.” So Abram built an altar out of large stones in that place and burned sacrifices on it to worship Yahweh, because Yahweh had appeared to him there.

8 From the city of Shechem, Abram and his family moved south to the hill country that was east of the town of Bethel. They set up their tents between Bethel to the west and the town of Ai to the east. There Abram built another altar and burned sacrifices on it to worship Yahweh, and he addressed Yahweh by his name as he worshiped him. 9 Then Abram and his family moved from place to place southward until they reached the Negev Desert.