the sons of God saw that the daughters of humankind were beautiful. Thus they took wives for themselves from any they chose.

Then God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign country. They will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years.

I will give the whole land of Canaan – the land where you are now residing – to you and your descendants after you as a permanent possession. I will be their God.”

But he urged them persistently, so they turned aside with him and entered his house. He prepared a feast for them, including bread baked without yeast, and they ate.

Then Joseph remembered the dreams he had dreamed about them, and he said to them, “You are spies; you have come to see if our land is vulnerable!”

Joseph said to them, “What did you think you were doing? Don’t you know that a man like me can find out things like this by divination?”

They told him, “Joseph is still alive and he is ruler over all the land of Egypt!” Jacob was stunned, for he did not believe them.

The men are shepherds; they take care of livestock. They have brought their flocks and their herds and all that they have.’

Joseph went and told Pharaoh, “My father, my brothers, their flocks and herds, and all that they own have arrived from the land of Canaan. They are now in the land of Goshen.”

So Joseph settled his father and his brothers. He gave them territory in the land of Egypt, in the best region of the land, the land of Rameses, just as Pharaoh had commanded.

These are the twelve tribes of Israel. This is what their father said to them when he blessed them. He gave each of them an appropriate blessing.

“You must no longer give straw to the people for making bricks as before. Let them go and collect straw for themselves.

I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name ‘the Lord’ I was not known to them.

I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they were living as resident foreigners.

It was the same Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, “Bring the Israelites out of the land of Egypt by their regiments.”

Tell the whole community of Israel, ‘In the tenth day of this month they each must take a lamb for themselves according to their families – a lamb for each household.

Now the Lord was going before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them in the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel day or night.

He jammed the wheels of their chariots so that they had difficulty driving, and the Egyptians said, “Let’s flee from Israel, for the Lord fights for them against Egypt!”

When they have a dispute, it comes to me and I decide between a man and his neighbor, and I make known the decrees of God and his laws.”