Genesis 12

¹ Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

² And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

³ I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves. "

⁴ So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-fiveyears old when he departed from Haran.

⁵ And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions which they had gathered, and the persons that they had gotten in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan,

⁶ Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.

⁷ Then the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, "To your descendants I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

⁸ Thence he removed to the mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD.

⁹ And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.

¹⁰ Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.

¹¹ When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, "I know that you are a woman beautiful to behold;

¹² and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife'; then they will kill me, but they will let you live.

¹³ Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account."

¹⁴ When Abram entered Egypt the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.

¹⁵ And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house.

¹⁶ And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, he-asses, menservants, maidservants, she-asses, and camels.

¹⁷ But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife.

¹⁸ So Pharaoh called Abram, and said, "What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?

¹⁹ Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone."

²⁰ And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him; and they set him on the way, with his wife and all that he had.