1 The LORD said to Abram, "Go out from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father's house, to the land that I will show you.
2 I will make you into a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great, and you are to be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who treats you with contempt I will curse; and in you all the clans of the earth will be blessed."
4 Abram went, just as the LORD had spoken to him, and Lot went along with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.
5 Abram took his wife Sarai, Lot his brother's son, all the goods they had accumulated, and the persons they had gained in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan; and they arrived in the land of Canaan.
6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of Shechem, as far as the oak of Moreh. The Canaanite was then in the land.
7 The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your seed I will give this land." There he built an altar to the LORD who had appeared to him.
8 He moved on from there to the mountain east of Bethel and set up his tent, having Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called upon the name of the LORD.
9 Then Abram set out, traveling on and on toward the Negev.
10 A famine came on the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to stay there as a foreigner, because the famine was heavy in the land.
11 As he drew near to entering Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, "Listen, I know that you are a woman lovely to look at.
12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'She is his wife,' and they will kill me but keep you alive.
13 Say, please, that you are my sister, so that things go well for me on your account and I stay alive because of you."
14 And so it was: when Abram came into Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very lovely.
15 Pharaoh's officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's household.
16 He treated Abram well on her account; Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male donkeys, male and female servants, female donkeys, and camels.
17 But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his household with severe plagues on account of Sarai, Abram's wife.
18 Pharaoh summoned Abram and said, "What have you done to me? Why did you not tell me she was your wife?
19 Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her to be my wife? Now, here is your wife—take her and go!"
20 Pharaoh gave his men orders about him, and they sent him off, with his wife and everything he owned.