Indeed, wine will betray the proud, restless man! His appetite is as big as Sheol’s; like death, he is never satisfied. He gathers all the nations; he seizes all peoples.

When the dove returned to him in the evening, there was a freshly plucked olive leaf in its beak! Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth.

He waited another seven days and sent the dove out again, but it did not return to him this time.

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.)

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.

But look, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but instead a son who comes from your own body will be your heir.”

The Lord said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”

Abraham spoke to him again, “What if forty are found there?” He replied, “I will not do it for the sake of the forty.”

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.

“Very well,” he replied, “I will grant this request too and will not overthrow the town you mentioned.

Some time after these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am!” Abraham replied.

So his father Isaac said to him, “Indeed, your home will be away from the richness of the earth, and away from the dew of the sky above.

But Jacob said to him, “My lord knows that the children are young, and that I have to look after the sheep and cattle that are nursing their young. If they are driven too hard for even a single day, all the animals will die.

He built an altar there and named the place El Bethel because there God had revealed himself to him when he was fleeing from his brother.

This is what she said to him: “That Hebrew slave you brought to us tried to humiliate me,

When his master heard his wife say, “This is the way your slave treated me,” he became furious.

But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him kindness. He granted him favor in the sight of the prison warden.

They told him, “We both had dreams, but there is no one to interpret them.” Joseph responded, “Don’t interpretations belong to God? Tell them to me.”

But Judah said to him, “The man solemnly warned us, ‘You will not see my face unless your brother is with you.’

Joseph harnessed his chariot and went up to meet his father Israel in Goshen. When he met him, he hugged his neck and wept on his neck for quite some time.