God's Call to Abram

12 ^(A)The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father's home, and go to a land that I am going to show you. ² I will give you many descendants, and they will become a great nation. I will bless you and make your name famous, so that you will be a blessing.

⁴ When Abram was seventy-five years old, he started out from Haran, as the Lord had told him to do; and Lot went with him. ⁵ Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all the wealth and all the slaves they had acquired in Haran, and they started out for the land of Canaan.

When they arrived in Canaan, ⁶ Abram traveled through the land until he came to the sacred tree of Moreh, the holy place at Shechem. (At that time the Canaanites were still living in the land.) ^7 (C)The Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “This is the country that I am going to give to your descendants.” Then Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him. ⁸ After that, he moved on south to the hill country east of the city of Bethel and set up his camp between Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There also he built an altar and worshiped the Lord. ⁹ Then he moved on from place to place, going toward the southern part of Canaan.

^3 (A)Then I took Abraham, your ancestor, from the land across the Euphrates and led him through the whole land of Canaan. I gave him many descendants. I gave him Isaac,

The Birth of Isaac

21 The Lord blessed Sarah, as he had promised, ^2 (A)and she became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham when he was old. The boy was born at the time God had said he would be born. ³ Abraham named him Isaac,