Parashah 3: Lekh L’kha (Get yourself out) 12:1–17:27

12 Now Adonai said to Avram, “Get yourself out of your country, away from your kinsmen and away from your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you. ² I will make of you a great nation, I will bless you, and I will make your name great; and you are to be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, but I will curse anyone who curses you; and by you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

⁴ So Avram went, as Adonai had said to him, and Lot went with him. Avram was 75 years old when he left Haran. ⁵ Avram took his wife Sarai, his brother’s son Lot, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, as well as the people they had acquired in Haran; then they set out for the land of Kena‘an and entered the land of Kena‘an.

⁶ Avram passed through the land to the place called Sh’khem, to the oak of Moreh. The Kena‘ani were then in the land. ⁷ Adonai appeared to Avram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to Adonai, who had appeared to him.

⁸ He left that place, went to the hill east of Beit-El and pitched his tent. With Beit-El to the west and ‘Ai to the east, he built an altar there and called on the name of Adonai. ⁹ Then Avram traveled on, continuing toward the Negev. ¹⁰ But there was a famine in the land, so Avram went down into Egypt to stay there, because the famine in the land was severe.

¹¹ When he came close to Egypt and was about to enter, he said to Sarai his wife, “Here now, I know that you are a good-looking woman; ¹² so that when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife,’ and kill me but keep you alive. ¹³ Please say that you are my sister, so that it will go well with me for your sake, and so that I will stay alive because of you.”

(ii) ¹⁴ When Avram entered Egypt, the Egyptians did notice that the woman was very beautiful. ¹⁵ Pharaoh’s princes saw her and commended her to Pharaoh, so the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. ¹⁶ He treated Avram well for her sake, giving him sheep, cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female slaves, and camels.

¹⁷ But Adonai inflicted great plagues on Pharaoh and his household because of Sarai Avram’s wife. ¹⁸ Pharaoh called Avram and said, “What is this that you have done to me? Why didn’t you tell me that she was your wife? ¹⁹ Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my own wife? Now therefore, here is your wife! Take her, and go away!” ²⁰ So Pharaoh gave orders concerning him to his men, and they sent him on his way with his wife and everything he had.