Genesis 12:1-20

The Obedience of Abram

12:1 Now the Lord said to Abram,

“Go out from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household

to the land that I will show you.

12:2 Then I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you,

and I will make your name great,

so that you will exemplify divine blessing.

12:3 I will bless those who bless you,

but the one who treats you lightly I must curse,

and all the families of the earth will bless one another by your name.”

12:4 So Abram left, just as the Lord had told him to do, and Lot went with him. (Now Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.) 12:5 And Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they left for the land of Canaan. They entered the land of Canaan.

12:6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the oak tree of Moreh at Shechem. (At that time the Canaanites were in the land.) 12:7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” So Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

12:8 Then he moved from there to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and worshiped the Lord. 12:9 Abram continually journeyed by stages down to the Negev.

The Promised Blessing Jeopardized

12:10 There was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to stay for a while because the famine was severe. 12:11 As he approached Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “Look, I know that you are a beautiful woman. 12:12 When the Egyptians see you they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will keep you alive. 12:13 So tell them you are my sister so that it may go well for me because of you and my life will be spared on account of you.”

12:14 When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. 12:15 When Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. So Abram’s wife was taken into the household of Pharaoh, 12:16 and he did treat Abram well on account of her. Abram received sheep and cattle, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.

12:17 But the Lord struck Pharaoh and his household with severe diseases because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. 12:18 So Pharaoh summoned Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why didn’t you tell me that she was your wife? 12:19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Here is your wife! Take her and go!” 12:20 Pharaoh gave his men orders about Abram, and so they expelled him, along with his wife and all his possessions.

Genesis 16:1

The Birth of Ishmael

16:1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had not given birth to any children, but she had an Egyptian servant named Hagar.

Genesis 25:9

25:9 His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah near Mamre, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar, the Hethite.

Jeremiah 28:16-17

28:16 So the Lord says, ‘I will most assuredly remove you from the face of the earth. You will die this very year because you have counseled rebellion against the Lord.’”

28:17 In the seventh month of that very same year the prophet Hananiah died.

Jeremiah 29:32

29:32 Because he has done this,” the Lord says, “I will punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite and his whole family. There will not be any of them left to experience the good things that I will do for my people. I, the Lord, affirm it! For he counseled rebellion against the Lord.”’”

Jeremiah 29:1

Jeremiah’s Letter to the Exiles

29:1 The prophet Jeremiah sent a letter to the exiles Nebuchadnezzar had carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon. It was addressed to the elders who were left among the exiles, to the priests, to the prophets, and to all the other people who were exiled in Babylon.

Colossians 1:10

1:10 so that you may live worthily of the Lord and please him in all respects – bearing fruit in every good deed, growing in the knowledge of God,

Hebrews 3:17

3:17 And against whom was God provoked for forty years? Was it not those who sinned, whose dead bodies fell in the wilderness?

Jude 1:5

1:5 Now I desire to remind you (even though you have been fully informed of these facts once for all) that Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, later destroyed those who did not believe.