Chronological Plan

¹Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he stood up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground.

²And he said, “Now behold, my lords, please turn aside into your servant’s house, and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way.” They said, “No, but we shall spend the night in the public square.”

³Yet he strongly urged them, so they turned aside to him and entered his house; and he prepared a feast for them and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

⁴Before they lay down, the men of the city—the men of Sodom—surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter;

⁵and they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them.”

⁶But Lot went out to them at the doorway, and shut the door behind him,

⁷and said, “Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly.

⁸Now look, I have two daughters who have not had relations with any man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them whatever you like; only do not do anything to these men, because they have come under the shelter of my roof.”

⁹But they said, “Get out of the way!” They also said, “This one came in as a foreigner, and already he is acting like a judge; now we will treat you worse than them!” So they pressed hard against Lot and moved forward to break the door.

¹⁰But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them, and shut the door.

¹¹Then they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, from the small to the great, so that they became weary of trying to find the doorway.

¹²Then the two men said to Lot, “Whom else do you have here? A son-in-law and your sons and daughters, and whomever you have in the city, bring them out of the place;

¹³for we are about to destroy this place, because their outcry has become so great before the LORD that the LORD has sent us to destroy it.”

¹⁴So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, and said, “Up, get out of this place, for the LORD is destroying the city.” But he appeared to his sons-in-law to be joking.

¹⁵When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city.”

¹⁶But he hesitated. So the men grasped his hand and the hand of his wife and the hands of his two daughters, because the compassion of the LORD was upon him; and they brought him out and put him outside the city.

¹⁷When they had brought them outside, one said, “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you, and do not stay anywhere in the surrounding area; escape to the mountains, or you will be swept away.”

¹⁸But Lot said to them, “Oh no, my lords!

¹⁹Now behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have magnified your compassion, which you have shown me by saving my life; but I cannot escape to the mountains, for the disaster will overtake me and I will die;

²⁰now behold, this town is near enough to flee to, and it is small. Please, let me escape there (is it not small?) so that my life may be saved.”

²¹And he said to him, “Behold, I grant you this request also, not to overthrow the town of which you have spoken.

²²Hurry, escape there, for I cannot do anything until you arrive there.” Therefore the town was named Zoar.

²³The sun had risen over the earth when Lot came to Zoar.

²⁴Then the LORD rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the LORD out of heaven,

²⁵and He overthrew those cities, and all the surrounding area, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.

²⁶But Lot’s wife, from behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

²⁷Now Abraham got up early in the morning and went to the place where he had stood before the LORD;

²⁸and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the surrounding area; and behold, he saw the smoke of the land ascended like the smoke of a furnace.

²⁹So it came about, when God destroyed the cities of the surrounding area, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the destruction, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.

³⁰Now Lot went up from Zoar with his two daughters and stayed in the mountains, because he was afraid to stay in Zoar; and he stayed in a cave, he and his two daughters.

³¹Then the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to have relations with us according to the custom of all the earth.

³²Come, let’s make our father drink wine, and let’s sleep with him so that we may keep our family alive through our father.”

³³So they made their father drink wine that night, and the firstborn went in and slept with her father; and he did not know when she lay down or got up.

³⁴On the following day, the firstborn said to the younger, “Look, I slept last night with my father; let’s make him drink wine tonight too, then you go in and sleep with him, so that we may keep our family alive through our father.”

³⁵So they had their father drink wine that night too, and the younger got up and slept with him; and he did not know when she lay down or got up.

³⁶And so both of the daughters of Lot conceived by their father.

³⁷The firstborn gave birth to a son, and named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites to this day.

³⁸As for the younger, she also gave birth to a son, and named him Ben-ammi; he is the father of the sons of Ammon to this day.

¹Now Abraham journeyed from there toward the land of the Negev, and settled between Kadesh and Shur; then he lived for a time in Gerar.

²And Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” So Abimelech king of Gerar sent men and took Sarah.

³But God came to Abimelech in a dream of the night, and said to him, “Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is married.”

⁴Now Abimelech had not come near her; and he said, “Lord, will You kill a nation, even though blameless?

⁵Did he himself not say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.”

⁶Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also kept you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her.

⁷Now then, return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not return her, know that you will certainly die, you and all who are yours.”

⁸So Abimelech got up early in the morning and called all his servants, and told all these things in their presence; and the people were greatly frightened.

⁹Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, “What have you done to us? And how have I sinned against you, that you have brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done.”

¹⁰And Abimelech said to Abraham, “What have you encountered, that you have done this thing?”

¹¹Abraham said, “Because I thought, surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.

¹²Besides, she actually is my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife;

¹³and it came about, when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, that I said to her, ‘This is the kindness which you will show to me: everywhere we go, say of me, “He is my brother.” ’ ”

¹⁴Abimelech then took sheep and oxen and male and female servants, and gave them to Abraham, and returned his wife Sarah to him.

¹⁵Abimelech said, “Behold, my land is before you; settle wherever you please.”

¹⁶To Sarah he said, “Look, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. It is your vindication before all who are with you, and before everyone you are cleared.”

¹⁷Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his female slaves, so that they gave birth to children.

¹⁸For the LORD had completely closed all the wombs of the household of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

¹Then the LORD took note of Sarah as He had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as He had promised.

²So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the appointed time of which God had spoken to him.

³Abraham named his son who was born to him, the son whom Sarah bore to him, Isaac.

⁴Then Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him.

⁵Now Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.

⁶Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.”

⁷And she said, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have given birth to a son in his old age.”

⁸And the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.

⁹Now Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking Isaac.

¹⁰Therefore she said to Abraham, “Drive out this slave woman and her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be an heir with my son Isaac!”

¹¹The matter distressed Abraham greatly because of his son Ishmael.

¹²But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and your slave woman; whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her, for through Isaac your descendants shall be named.

¹³And of the son of the slave woman I will make a nation also, because he is your descendant.”

¹⁴So Abraham got up early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar, putting them on her shoulder, and gave her the boy, and sent her away. And she departed and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba.

¹⁵When the water in the skin was used up, she left the boy under one of the bushes.

¹⁶Then she went and sat down opposite him, about a bowshot away, for she said, “May I not see the boy die!” And she sat opposite him, and raised her voice and wept.

¹⁷God heard the boy crying; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter with you, Hagar? Do not fear, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.

¹⁸Get up, lift up the boy, and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him.”

¹⁹Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.

²⁰And God was with the boy, and he grew; and he lived in the wilderness and became an archer.

²¹He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

²²Now it came about at that time that Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, spoke to Abraham, saying, “God is with you in all that you do;

²³so now, swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my offspring or with my descendants, but according to the kindness that I have shown to you, you shall show to me and to the land in which you have resided.”

²⁴Abraham said, “I swear it.”

²⁵But Abraham complained to Abimelech because of the well of water which the servants of Abimelech had seized.

²⁶And Abimelech said, “I do not know who has done this thing; you did not tell me, nor did I hear of it until today.”

²⁷So Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two of them made a covenant.

²⁸But Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves.

²⁹Then Abimelech said to Abraham, “What do these seven ewe lambs mean, which you have set by themselves?”

³⁰He said, “You shall take these seven ewe lambs from my hand so that it may be a witness for me, that I dug this well.”

³¹Therefore he called that place Beersheba, because there the two of them took an oath.

³²So they made a covenant at Beersheba; and Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, got up and returned to the land of the Philistines.

³³Abraham planted a tamarisk tree at Beersheba, and there he called on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God.

³⁴And Abraham resided in the land of the Philistines for many days.