The Call of Abram

12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.^{(A) 2} I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.^{(B) 3} 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 shall be blessed.”^[a](C)

⁴ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.^{(D) 5} Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot and all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan,^{(E) 6} Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak^[b] of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.^{(F) 7} Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.^(G)

The Sign of the Covenant

17 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty;^[a] walk before me, and be blameless.^{(A) 2} And I will make my covenant between me and you and will make you exceedingly numerous.”^{(B) 3} Then Abram fell on his face, and God said to him, ⁴ “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.^{(C) 5} No longer shall your name be Abram,^[b] but your name shall be Abraham,^[c] for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations.^{(D) 6} I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.^{(E) 7} I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.^{(F) 8} And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding, and I will be their God.”^(G)