⁴So Abram left Haran as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. At this time Abram was 75 years old. ⁵He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and everything they owned, as well as all the servants they had gotten in Haran. They set out from Haran, planning to go to the land of Canaan, and in time they arrived there.

⁶Abram traveled through that land as far as the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. The Canaanites were living in the land at that time. ⁷The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your descendants.” So Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him. ⁸Then he traveled from Shechem to the mountain east of Bethel and set up his tent there. Bethel was to the west, and Ai was to the east. There Abram built another altar to the Lord and worshiped him. ⁹After this, he traveled on toward southern Canaan.

Abram Goes to Egypt

¹⁰At this time there was not much food in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to live because there was so little food. ¹¹Just before they arrived in Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know you are a very beautiful woman. ¹²When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This woman is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but let you live. ¹³Tell them you are my sister so that things will go well with me and I may be allowed to live because of you.”

¹⁴When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was very beautiful. ¹⁵The Egyptian officers saw her and told the king of Egypt how beautiful she was. They took her to the king’s palace, and ¹⁶the king was kind to Abram because he thought Abram was her brother. He gave Abram sheep, cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.

¹⁷But the Lord sent terrible diseases on the king and all the people in his house because of Abram’s wife Sarai. ¹⁸So the king sent for Abram and said, “What have you done to me? Why didn’t you tell me Sarai was your wife? ¹⁹Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’ so that I made her my wife? Now, here is your wife. Take her and leave!” ²⁰Then the king commanded his men to make Abram leave Egypt; so Abram and his wife left with everything they owned.

Abram and Lot Separate

13So Abram, his wife, and Lot left Egypt, taking everything they owned, and traveled to southern Canaan. ²Abram was very rich in cattle, silver, and gold.

³He left southern Canaan and went back to Bethel where he had camped before, between Bethel and Ai, ⁴and where he had built an altar. So he worshiped the Lord there.

⁵During this time Lot was traveling with Abram, and Lot also had flocks, herds, and tents. ⁶Abram and Lot had so many animals that the land could not support both of them together, ⁷so Abram’s herdsmen and Lot’s herdsmen began to argue. The Canaanites and the Perizzites were living in the land at this time.

⁸Abram said to Lot, “There should be no arguing between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine, because we are brothers. ⁹We should separate. The whole land is there in front of you. If you go to the left, I will go to the right. If you go to the right, I will go to the left.”

¹⁰Lot looked all around and saw the whole Jordan Valley and that there was much water there. It was like the Lord’s garden, like the land of Egypt in the direction of Zoar. (This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) ¹¹So Lot chose to move east and live in the Jordan Valley. In this way Abram and Lot separated. ¹²Abram lived in the land of Canaan, but Lot lived among the cities in the Jordan Valley, very near to Sodom. ¹³Now the people of Sodom were very evil and were always sinning against the Lord.

¹⁴After Lot left, the Lord said to Abram, “Look all around you—to the north and south and east and west. ¹⁵All this land that you see I will give to you and your descendants forever. ¹⁶I will make your descendants as many as the dust of the earth. If anyone could count the dust on the earth, he could count your people. ¹⁷Get up! Walk through all this land because I am now giving it to you.”

¹⁸So Abram moved his tents and went to live near the great trees of Mamre at the city of Hebron. There he built an altar to the Lord.

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