Genesis 11–25

The Tower of Babylon

11At first, the people of the whole world had only one language and used the same words. ²As they wandered about in the East, they came to a plain in Babylonia and settled there. ³They said to one another, “Come on! Let’s make bricks and bake them hard.” So they had bricks to build with and tar to hold them together. ⁴They said, “Now let’s build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth.”

⁵Then the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which those men had built, ⁶and he said, “Now then, these are all one people and they speak one language; this is just the beginning of what they are going to do. Soon they will be able to do anything they want! ⁷Let us go down and mix up their language so that they will not understand one another.” ⁸So the Lord scattered them all over the earth, and they stopped building the city. ⁹The city was called Babylon,^g because there the Lord mixed up the language of all the people, and from there he scattered them all over the earth.

The Descendants of Shem

¹⁰These are the descendants of Shem. Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he had a son, Arpachshad. ¹¹After that, he lived another 500 years and had other children.

¹²When Arpachshad was 35 years old, he had a son, Shelah; ¹³after that, he lived another 403 years and had other children.

¹⁴When Shelah was 30 years old, he had a son, Eber; ¹⁵after that, he lived another 403 years and had other children.

¹⁶When Eber was 34 years old, he had a son, Peleg; ¹⁷after that, he lived another 430 years and had other children.

¹⁸When Peleg was 30 years old, he had a son, Reu; ¹⁹after that, he lived another 209 years and had other children.

²⁰When Reu was 32 years old, he had a son, Serug; ²¹after that, he lived another 207 years and had other children.

²²When Serug was 30 years old, he had a son, Nahor; ²³after that, he lived another 200 years and had other children.

²⁴When Nahor was 29 years old, he had a son, Terah; ²⁵after that, he lived another 119 years and had other children.

²⁶After Terah was 70 years old, he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

The Descendants of Terah

²⁷These are the descendants of Terah, who was the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran was the father of Lot, ²⁸and Haran died in his native city, Ur in Babylonia, while his father was still living. ²⁹Abram married Sarai, and Nahor married Milcah, the daughter of Haran, who was also the father of Iscah. ³⁰Sarai was not able to have children.

³¹Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, who was the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, Abram’s wife, and with them he left the city of Ur in Babylonia to go to the land of Canaan. They went as far as Haran and settled there. ³²Terah died there at the age of 205.

God’s Call to Abram

12^*The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father’s home, and go to a land that I am going to show you. ²I will give you many descendants, and they will become a great nation. I will bless you and make your name famous, so that you will be a blessing.

^3*I will bless those who bless you,

But I will curse those who curse you.

And through you I will bless all the nations.”^h

⁴When Abram was 75 years old, he started out from Haran, as the Lord had told him to do; and Lot went with him. ⁵Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all the wealth and all the slaves they had acquired in Haran, and they started out for the land of Canaan.

When they arrived in Canaan, ⁶Abram travelled through the land until he came to the sacred tree of Moreh, the holy place at Shechem. (At that time the Canaanites were still living in the land.) ^7*The Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “This is the country that I am going to give to your descendants.” Then Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him. ⁸After that, he moved on south to the hill country east of the city of Bethel and set up his camp between Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There also he built an altar and worshipped the Lord. ⁹Then he moved on from place to place, going towards the southern part of Canaan.

Abram in Egypt

¹⁰But there was a famine in Canaan, and it was so bad that Abram went farther south to Egypt, to live there for a while. ¹¹When he was about to cross the border into Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “You are a beautiful woman. ¹²When the Egyptians see you, they will assume that you are my wife, and so they will kill me and let you live. ^13*Tell them that you are my sister; then because of you they will let me live and treat me well.” ¹⁴When he crossed the border into Egypt, the Egyptians did see that his wife was beautiful. ¹⁵Some of the court officials saw her and told the king how beautiful she was; so she was taken to his palace. ¹⁶Because of her the king treated Abram well and gave him flocks of sheep and goats, cattle, donkeys, slaves, and camels.

¹⁷But because the king had taken Sarai, the Lord sent terrible diseases on him and on the people of his palace. ¹⁸Then the king sent for Abram and asked him, “What have you done to me? Why didn’t you tell me that she was your wife? ¹⁹Why did you say that she was your sister, and let me take her as my wife? Here is your wife; take her and get out!” ²⁰The king gave orders to his men, so they took Abram and put him out of the country, together with his wife and everything he owned.

Abram and Lot Separate

13Abram went north out of Egypt to the southern part of Canaan with his wife and everything he owned, and Lot went with him. ²Abram was a very rich man, with sheep, goats, and cattle, as well as silver and gold. ³Then he left there and moved from place to place, going towards Bethel. He reached the place between Bethel and Ai where he had camped before ⁴and had built an altar. There he worshipped the Lord.

⁵Lot also had sheep, goats, and cattle, as well as his own family and servants. ⁶And so there was not enough pasture land for the two of them to stay together, because they had too many animals. ⁷So quarrels broke out between the men who took care of Abram’s animals and those who took care of Lot’s animals. (At that time the Canaanites and the Perizzites were still living in the land.)

⁸Then Abram said to Lot, “We are relatives, and your men and my men shouldn’t be quarrelling. ⁹So let’s separate. Choose any part of the land you want. You go one way, and I’ll go the other.”

^10*Lot looked round and saw that the whole Jordan Valley, all the way to Zoar, had plenty of water, like the Garden of the Lordⁱ or like the land of Egypt. (This was before the Lord had destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.) ¹¹So Lot chose the whole Jordan Valley for himself and moved away towards the east. That is how the two men parted. ¹²Abram stayed in the land of Canaan, and Lot settled among the cities in the valley and camped near Sodom, ¹³whose people were wicked and sinned against the Lord.

Abram moves to Hebron

¹⁴After Lot had left, the Lord said to Abram, “From where you are, look carefully in all directions. ^15*I am going to give you and your descendants all the land that you see, and it will be yours for ever. ¹⁶I am going to give you so many descendants that no one will be able to count them all; it would be as easy to count all the specks of dust on earth! ¹⁷Now, go and look over the whole land, because I am going to give it all to you.” ¹⁸So Abram moved his camp and settled near the sacred trees of Mamre at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord.

Abram Rescues Lot

14Four kings, Amraphel of Babylonia, Arioch of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer of Elam, and Tidal of Goiim, ²went to war against five other kings: Bera of Sodom, Birsha of Gomorrah, Shinab of Admah, Shemeber of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (or Zoar). ³These five kings had formed an alliance and joined forces in the Valley of Siddim, which is now the Dead Sea. ⁴They had been under the control of Chedorlaomer for twelve years, but in the thirteenth year they rebelled against him. ⁵In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and his allies came with their armies and defeated the Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in the plain of Kiriathaim, ⁶and the Horites in the mountains of Edom, pursuing them as far as Elparan on the edge of the desert. ⁷Then they turned round and came back to Kadesh (then known as Enmishpat). They conquered all the land of the Amalekites and defeated the Amorites who lived in Hazazon Tamar.

⁸Then the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Bela drew up their armies for battle in the Valley of Siddim and fought ⁹against the kings of Elam, Goiim, Babylonia, and Ellasar, five kings against four. ¹⁰The valley was full of tar pits, and when the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah tried to run away from the battle, they fell into the pits; but the other three kings escaped to the mountains. ¹¹The four kings took everything in Sodom and Gomorrah, including the food, and went away. ¹²Lot, Abram’s nephew, was living in Sodom, so they took him and all his possessions.

¹³But a man escaped and reported all this to Abram, the Hebrew, who was living near the sacred trees belonging to Mamre the Amorite. Mamre and his brothers Eshcol and Aner were Abram’s allies. ¹⁴When Abram heard that his nephew had been captured, he called together all the fighting men in his camp, 318 in all, and pursued the four kings all the way to Dan. ¹⁵There he divided his men into groups, attacked the enemy by night, and defeated them. He chased them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus, ¹⁶and recovered the loot that had been taken. He also brought back his nephew Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other prisoners.

Melchizedek Blesses Abram

¹⁷When Abram came back from his victory over Chedorlaomer and the other kings, the king of Sodom went out to meet him in the Valley of Shaveh (also called the King’s Valley). ^18*And Melchizedek, who was king of Salem and…