The Call and the Journey

1Yahweh said to Abram, “Go out from your land, from your kindred, and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”

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

3And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

4So Abram went, just as Yahweh had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

5Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had acquired, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set out to go to the land of Canaan, and they came to the land of Canaan.

6Abram passed through the land as far as the place of Shechem, as far as the oak of Moreh. Now the Canaanite was then in the land.

7Then Yahweh appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So there he built an altar to Yahweh, who had appeared to him.

8From there he moved 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 Yahweh and called on the name of Yahweh.

9And Abram journeyed on, going toward the Negev.