1 Moreover the Lord said to Abram: Go forth out of your land, and from your kindred, and from the home of your father, and come into the land which I will show you. 2 And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will glorify your name, and you will be blessed. 3 I will bless those blessing you, and curse those cursing you, and IN YOU will be blessed the kindred of the whole Earth.

4 Therefore Abram went out as the Lord ordered him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy five years old when he went out of Haran. 5 And he took Sarai his wife, and Lot the son of his brother, and all the property which they possessed, and the souls which they made in Haran; and they went out so they would go into the land of Chanaan. And when they came into it, 6 Abram passed through the land all the way to the place of Sichem, all the way to the shining ravine; moreover he was a Chanaanite in the land.

7 Moreover the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him: I will give this land to your offspring. He built there an altar to the Lord, who appeared to him. 8 And going from there to the mountain, which was to the East of Bethel, he set up his tabernacle there with Bethel to the West and Hai to the East, and also he built there an altar to the Lord and invoked his name.

 9 And Abram continued going, and furthermore progressing to the South. 10 Moreover hunger was made in the land; and Abram went down into Egypt, so that he could sojourn abroad there; indeed hunger settled in the land. 

11 And when he was ready to go into Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife: I know what a beautiful woman you are, 12 and that when the Egyptians will see you, they will say: She is  his wife; and they will kill me, and spare you. 13 Say, therefore, I implore you, that you are my sister, so that it might be well for me, because of you, and my soul lives on account of your grace.

14 When in this way Abram had entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw his wife who was excessively beautiful, 15 and the foremost  announced to Pharaoh, and praised her before him; and his wife  was taken away into the house of Pharaoh. 16 Indeed they employed Abram well on account of her, and there was to him sheep and cows, and donkeys, and slaves, and hand-maidens, and female asses and camels.

17 However, the Lord scourged Pharaoh with great plagues, and his home, because Sarai was the wife of Abram. 18 And Pharaoh called to Abram, and said to him: What is this which you have done to me? Why did you not reveal that she was your wife? 19 Why, did you say she was your sister, so that I took her to myself as a wife? Now therefore here is your spouse, take her, and go.

20 And Pharaoh ordered his men concerning Abram. And they sent him away, and his wife, and everything he had.

Linguistic notes

Nothing particularly knotty here, although I did get tangled up a bit in verse 3, where I misread benedicentibus tibi… maledicentibus tibi as phrases in the ablative absolute rather than seeing benedicentibus and maledicentibus as being dative objects of benedicam and maledicam.

Theological notes

This is the first of a number of trickster narratives that take place in Genesis (in fact this particular ruse of pretending that the wife is the sister will play out again between Isaac and Abimelech when we get to Chapter 26). There is some argument that Abram engages in this deceit because he doesn’t fully trust in God to protect him, but it seems that God is pretty complicit in the action, waiting until Abram has been endowed with livestock and slaves before scourging Pharaoh so that when Abram leaves Egypt, he leaves as a rich man, returning to a famished country.