Genesis 12

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.

10There was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, because the famine was severe in the land.

11And it happened, as he was about to enter Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife, “Look now, I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance.”

12And it will be that when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife,’ and they will kill me, but they will let you live.

13Please say that you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and my life may be spared on your account.

14And when Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.

15When Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.

16And he treated Abram well because of her, and he came to have sheep and cattle and male donkeys and male servants and female servants and female donkeys and camels.

17But Yahweh afflicted Pharaoh and his household with severe plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.

18Then Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she is your wife?”

19Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ and I took her to be my wife? And now, here is your wife. Take her and go.”

20Then Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that belonged to him.