² Then the Lord appeared to him and said: ^(A)“Do not go down to Egypt; live in ^(B)the land of which I shall tell you.

The Son of Promise^(A)

18 Then the Lord appeared to him by ^[a]the ^(B)terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day.

The Sign of the Covenant^(A)

17 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord ^(B)appeared to Abram and said to him, ^(C)“I am ^[a]Almighty God; ^(D)walk before Me and be ^(E)blameless.

^7 (A)Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, ^(B)“To your ^[a]descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an ^(C)altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

Promises to Abram^(A)

12 Now the ^(B)Lord had said to Abram:

¹⁰ And He said, “I will certainly return to you ^(A)according to the time of life, and behold, ^(B)Sarah your wife shall have a son.”

(Sarah was listening in the tent door which was behind him.) ¹¹ Now ^(C)Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; and ^[a]Sarah ^(D)had passed the age of childbearing. ¹² Therefore Sarah ^(E)laughed within herself, saying, ^(F)“After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my ^(G)lord being old also?”

¹³ And the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old?’ ^14 (H)Is anything too hard for the Lord? ^(I)At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.”

¹⁵ But Sarah denied it, saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was afraid.

And He said, “No, but you did laugh!”

Abraham Intercedes for Sodom

¹⁶ Then the men rose from there and looked toward Sodom, and Abraham went with them ^(J)to send them on the way. ¹⁷ And the Lord said, ^(K)“Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing, ¹⁸ since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be ^(L)blessed in him? ¹⁹ For I have known him, in order ^(M)that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him.” ²⁰ And the Lord said, “Because ^(N)the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their ^(O)sin is very grave,