Genesis 12:1

Now the Lord said ¹  to Abram, ²  “Go out ³  from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household to the land that I will show you. ⁴ 

The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.

Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you;

Then the LORD told Abram, "Leave your country, your relatives, and your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you.

GOD told Abram: "Leave your country, your family, and your father's home for a land that I will show you.

Now the Lord said to Abram, Go out from your country and from your family and from your father’s house, into the land to which I will be your guide:

Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.

Now the LORD had said to Abram: "Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you.

Now the Lord said ¹  to Abram, ²  “Go out ³  from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household to the land that I will show you. ⁴ 

¹ sn The Lord called Abram while he was in Ur (see Gen 15:7; Acts 7:2); but the sequence here makes it look like it was after the family left to migrate to Canaan (11:31-32). Genesis records the call of Abram at this place in the narrative because it is the formal beginning of the account of Abram. The record of Terah was brought to its end before this beginning.

² tn The call of Abram begins with an imperative לֶךְ־לְךָ (lekh-lÿkha, “go out”) followed by three cohortatives (v. 2a) indicating purpose or consequence (“that I may” or “then I will”). If Abram leaves, then God will do these three things. The second imperative (v. 2b, literally “and be a blessing”) is subordinated to the preceding cohortatives and indicates God’s ultimate purpose in calling and blessing Abram. On the syntactical structure of vv. 1-2 see R. B. Chisholm, “Evidence from Genesis,” A Case for Premillennialism, 37. For a similar sequence of volitive forms see Gen 45:18.

sn It would be hard to overestimate the value of this call and this divine plan for the theology of the Bible. Here begins God’s plan to bring redemption to the world. The promises to Abram will be turned into a covenant in Gen 15 and 22 (here it is a call with conditional promises) and will then lead through the Bible to the work of the Messiah.

³ tn The initial command is the direct imperative (לֶךְ, lekh) from the verb הָלַךְ (halakh). It is followed by the lamed preposition with a pronominal suffix (לְךָ, lÿkha) emphasizing the subject of the imperative: “you leave.”

⁴ sn To the land that I will show you. The call of Abram illustrates the leading of the Lord. The command is to leave. The Lord’s word is very specific about what Abram is to leave (the three prepositional phrases narrow to his father’s household), but is not specific at all about where he is to go. God required faith, a point that Heb 11:8 notes.