Go Forth
God speaks to Avram with the words lech lecha, go for yourself, telling him to leave everything familiar and travel to a land that God will show him. God promises to make him a great nation, to bless him, and to make his name great, so that through him all the families of the earth will find blessing. Avram, seventy-five years old, takes his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all they have, and journeys to the land of Canaan. There God appears and promises the land to Avram's offspring, and Avram builds altars to God as he travels through the land toward the south.
Descent to Egypt
A famine grips the land, and Avram goes down to Egypt to survive. Fearing that the Egyptians will kill him in order to take his beautiful wife, he asks Sarai to say that she is his sister. Par'oh (Pharaoh) has Sarai brought to his palace and treats Avram well for her sake, but God strikes Par'oh and his household with plagues. Realizing the truth, Par'oh returns Sarai to Avram and sends them away, and they leave Egypt enriched with flocks, silver, and gold.
Avram and Lot Part
Avram and Lot return to Canaan so wealthy that the land cannot support them both, and quarrels break out between their herdsmen. Avram, unwilling to let strife divide the family, offers Lot his choice of any direction. Lot chooses the lush plain of the Jordan near the city of Sodom, while Avram remains in the land of Canaan. God again promises Avram all the land he can see and descendants as countless as the dust of the earth, and Avram settles by the oaks of Chevron (Hebron) and builds an altar there.
War of the Kings
A war erupts among the kings of the region, and in the fighting the city of Sodom is plundered and Lot is carried off as a captive. When Avram hears that his nephew has been taken, he arms the men of his household, pursues the victorious kings, and rescues Lot along with all the captives and goods. On his return he is greeted by Malki-Tzedek (Melchizedek), the king of Shalem and a priest of God, who brings out bread and wine and blesses him. Avram gives a tenth of everything but refuses to keep any spoils from the king of Sodom, so that no one can say they made him rich.
The Covenant of the Parts
God comes to Avram in a vision, promising to be his shield and his great reward. Avram, still childless, asks how the promise can be fulfilled, and God brings him outside to count the stars, telling him his descendants will be just as many. Avram believes God, and his faith is counted as righteousness. In a solemn ceremony among divided animals, God foretells that Avram's descendants will be strangers in a land not their own, enslaved and afflicted for generations, and then brought out with great wealth to inherit the land promised from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates.
Hagar and Yishmael
Sarai, unable to bear children, gives her Egyptian maidservant Hagar to Avram in the hope of building a family through her. Hagar conceives, and when she begins to look down on her mistress, Sarai treats her harshly and Hagar flees into the wilderness. There an angel of God finds her beside a spring, tells her to return, and promises that her son will father a great multitude. She is to name him Yishmael (Ishmael), for God has heard her affliction, and Hagar returns and bears him when Avram is eighty-six years old.
The Covenant of Circumcision
When Avram is ninety-nine, God appears again and seals the covenant in his very flesh through brit milah (circumcision). God changes his name from Avram to Avraham (Abraham), father of many nations, and changes Sarai's name to Sarah, promising that she herself will bear a son within the year. Avraham is to name that son Yitzchak (Isaac), and through him the covenant will continue, though Yishmael too is blessed to become a great nation. That very day Avraham circumcises himself, Yishmael, and every male of his household, fulfilling God's command without delay.