Acts 7:3

and told him, ‘Leave your country and your kindred and go to the land I will show you.’

Berean Standard Bible

Study note

Setting — Stephen addresses the assembled leaders while recounting God’s appearance to Abraham in Mesopotamia prior to his settlement in Haran.

The words — ἔξελθε (exelthe) functions as an imperative meaning "do go out" or "leave," and γῆς (gēs) specifies the "country" or homeland from which departure is commanded.

The thread — This directive mirrors the initial summons in Genesis 12:1 and is recorded in Hebrews 11:8 as the starting point for Abraham’s obedient movement.

Why it lands — The text requires immediate physical separation from one’s native land and relatives to follow a destination that God will personally reveal.

Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.

The Greek words

King James Version

And said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee.

Cross-references

Genesis 12:1 Then the LORD said to Abram, “Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you.
Hebrews 11:8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, without knowing where he was going.
Genesis 15:7 The LORD also told him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”
Joshua 24:3 But I took your father Abraham from beyond the Euphrates and led him through all the land of Canaan, and I multiplied his descendants. I gave him Isaac,
Nehemiah 9:8 You found his heart faithful before You, and made a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanites and Hittites, of the Amorites and Perizzites, of the Jebusites and Girgashites—to give it to his descendants. You have kept Your promise, because You are righteous.
Matthew 10:37 Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me;
Luke 14:33 In the same way, any one of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be My disciple.
2 Corinthians 6:17 “Therefore come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.”
Genesis 13:14 After Lot had departed, the LORD said to Abram, “Now lift up your eyes from the place where you are, and look to the north and south and east and west,