The NIV Study Bible

genesis chapter xii

The Tower of Babel

12:1 The Lord has said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people, and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.

12:2 "I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.

12:3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you."

12:4 So Abram left, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran.

12:5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

12:6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.

12:7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring, I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

12:8 From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.

12:9 Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.

Abram in Egypt

12:10 Now there was a famine in the land of Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.

12:11 As he was about to enter Egypt he said to his wife Sarai, "I know what a beautiful woman you are.

12:12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife.' Then they will kill me but will let you live.

12:13 Say you are my sister so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you."

12:14 When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that she was a very beautiful woman.

12:15 And when Pharaoh's officials saw her, they praised her to Pharoah, and she was taken into his palace.

12:16 He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, menservants and maidservants, and camels.

12:17 But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram's wife Sarai.

12:18 So Pharaoh summoned Abram. "What have you done to me?" he said. "Why didn't you tell me she was your wife?

12:19 Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!"

12:20 Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.

Other Notes

verse 1 — had said. God had spoken to Abram while he was still in Mesopotamia; before he lived in Haran.

Leave... show you. Abram must leave the settled world of the post-Babel nations and begin a pilgrimage with God to a better world of God's making (see 24:7; 11:1-9; Heb 11:10). Here begins the story of how the Lord created Himself a people who acknowledged him as the only true God and who had as their homeland a place in the world that would be called "the Lord's land" (Jos 22:9) and even "the place... You made for Your dwelling, the sanctuary... Your hands established" (ex 15:17).