Bible Strands
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.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Yahweh speaks directly to Abram, issuing a command that severs his ties to Ur (Nehemiah 9:7). This is the opening act of Abram's narrative in Genesis.
The words — לֶךְ (lekh), the singular imperative of "go," is the hinge of the entire verse: a bare command with no condition, no negotiation, no stated destination. It is followed by three prepositional phrases of departure (from your land, from your kindred, from your father's household), each marked by the preposition מִן (min, "from").
The thread — Hebrews 11:8 picks up the same moment, emphasizing that Abram obeyed "without knowing where he was going." Acts 7:2 frames it as the God of glory appearing to Abraham, and Nehemiah 9:7 confirms Ur as the point of origin.
Why it lands — The command names three concrete anchors of identity—country, kin, household—and orders their abandonment for a destination that is not yet given. The reader is asked to hold the tension between a specific command and an unspecified destination without resolving it.
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 Hebrew words
King James Version
Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
Cross-references
- 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.
- Nehemiah 9:7 You are the LORD, the God who chose Abram, who brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham.
- Acts 7:2 And Stephen declared: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran,
- Isaiah 51:2 Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who gave you birth. When I called him, he was but one; then I blessed him and multiplied him.
- Joshua 24:2 And Joshua said to all the people, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your fathers, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates and worshiped other gods.
- Genesis 11:31 And Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai the wife of Abram, and they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans for the land of Canaan. But when they arrived in Haran, they settled there.
- Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be My disciple.
- 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.”
- Ezekiel 33:24 “Son of man, those living in the ruins in the land of Israel are saying, ‘Abraham was only one man, yet he possessed the land. But we are many; surely the land has been given to us as a possession.’
- 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.”