Genesis
Chapter 12
1 God told Abram, “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father’s home, and go to a land I will show you.”
2 I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you; through you, all the earth’s families will be blessed.
4 Abram left as God had told him, and Lot went too; Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.
5 Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, everything they owned, and all the people they had in Haran. They set out for Canaan and arrived there.
6 Abram traveled through the land to Sichem, to the Moreh plain. The Canaanite people were living in the land at that time.
7 God showed himself to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your children.” There Abram built an altar to God who had appeared to him.
8 He moved from there to a mountain east of Bethel, set up his tent with Bethel to the west and Hai to the east, built an altar to God, and called on God’s name.
9 Abram traveled on, heading south.
10 There was not enough food in the land, so Abram went to Egypt to stay because the lack of food was very severe in the land.
11 When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “Look, I know you are a beautiful woman.
12 So when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife,’ and they will kill me but let you live.
13 Please say you are my sister, so that things will go well for me because of you, and my life will be spared thanks to you.
14 When Abram arrived in Egypt, the Egyptians saw that his wife was very beautiful.
15 Pharaoh’s leaders saw her, praised her to Pharaoh, and she was brought into Pharaoh’s house.
16 He treated Abram well because of her, giving him sheep, cows, donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.
17 God punished Pharaoh and his household with severe plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.
18 Pharaoh called Abram and asked, “What have you done to me? Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife?”
19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’? I could have married her because of that. Now, here is your wife, take her and leave.
20 The king told his men about him, and they made him leave with his wife and all his belongings.