12 1 THE LORD SAID TO ABRAM, 'Leave your own country, your kinsmen, and your father's house, and go to a country that I will show you. 12 2 I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you and make your name so great that it shall be used in blessings: 12 3 Those that bless you I will bless, those that curse you, I will execrate. All the families on earth will pray to be blessed as you are blessed.'
12 4 And so Abram set out as the LORD had bidden him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Harran. 12 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the property they had collected, and all the dependants they had acquired in Harran, and they started on their journey to Canaan. When they arrived, 12 6 Abram passed through the country to the sanctuary at Shechem, the terebinth-tree of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites lived in this land. 12 7 There the LORD appeared to Abram and said, 'I give this land to your descendants.' So Abram built an altar there to the LORD who had appeared to him. 12 8 Thence he went on to the hill-country east of Bethel and pitched his tent between Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and invoked the LORD by name. 12 9 Thus Abram journeyed by stages towards the Negeb.