⁶ God spoke to him in this way: ‘For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated.^{(A) 7} But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.’^{[a](B) 8} Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision.^(C) And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth.^(D) Later Isaac became the father of Jacob,^(E) and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.^(F)