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Chapter 12

Abram’s Call and Migration. The Lord said to Abram: Go forth[a] from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.(A)

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Footnotes

  1. 12:1–3 Go forth…find blessing in you: the syntax of the Hebrew suggests that the blessings promised to Abraham are contingent on his going to Canaan.

(A)Abram went as the Lord directed him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. [a]Abram took his wife Sarai, his brother’s son Lot, all the possessions that they had accumulated, and the persons they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan,

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Footnotes

  1. 12:5 The ancestors appear in Genesis as pastoral nomads living at the edge of settled society, and having occasional dealings with the inhabitants, sometimes even moving into towns for brief periods. Unlike modern nomads such as the Bedouin, however, ancient pastoralists fluctuated between following the herds and sedentary life, depending on circumstances. Pastoralists could settle down and farm and later resume a pastoral way of life. Indeed, there was a symbiotic relationship between pastoralists and villagers, each providing goods to the other. Persons: servants and others who formed the larger household under the leadership of Abraham; cf. 14:14.