Lech-Lecha

[4] Following God's command, at age 75, Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and the wealth and persons that they had acquired in Haran, and traveled to the terebinth of Moreh, at Shechem in Canaan.

[19] Lot saw how well watered the plain of the Jordan was, so he chose it for himself, and journeyed eastward, settling near Sodom, a city of wicked sinners, while Abram remained in Canaan.

[25] In the fourteenth year, Chedorlaomer and the Mesopotamian kings with him went on a military campaign and defeated several peoples in and around Canaan: the Rephaim, the Zuzim, the Emim, the Horites, the Amalekites, and the Amorites.

[27] The Mesopotamians routed the Canaanites, and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled into bitumen pits in the valley, while the rest escaped to the hill country.

[40] In the sixth reading, God directed Abram to bring three heifers, three goats, three rams, a turtledove, and a bird, to cut the non-birds in two, and to place each half opposite the other.

[64] In response to Abraham's prayer, God blessed Ishmael as well and promised to make him exceedingly numerous, the father of twelve chieftains and a great nation.

[72] The parashah has parallels or is discussed in these Biblical sources:[73] Joshua 24:2 reports that Abram's father Terah lived beyond the River Euphrates and served other gods.

The parashah has parallels or is discussed in these early nonrabbinic sources:[76] The second century BCE Book of Jubilees reported that Abraham endured ten trials and was found faithful and patient in spirit.

Jubilees listed eight of the trials: (1) leaving his country, (2) the famine, (3) the wealth of kings, (4) his wife taken from him, (5) circumcision, (6) Hagar and Ishmael driven away, (7) the binding of Isaac, and (8) buying the land to bury Sarah.

[89] The Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer counted as the ten trials: (1) when Abram was a child and all the magnates of the kingdom and the magicians sought to kill him (see below), (2) when he was put into prison for ten years and cast into the furnace of fire, (3) his migration from his father's house and from the land of his birth, (4) the famine, (5) when Sarah his wife was taken to be Pharaoh's wife, (6) when the kings came to kill him, (7) when (in the words of Genesis 17:1) "the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision," (8) when Abram was 99 years old and God asked him to circumcise himself, (9) when Sarah asked Abraham (in the words of Genesis 21:10) to "Cast out this bondwoman and her son," and (10) the binding of Isaac.

[95] The Gemara reported that some deduced from Genesis 12:1–2 that change of place can cancel a person's doom, but another argued that it was the merit of the land of Israel that availed Abraham.

Serah told the elders that Moses was the one who would redeem Israel from Egypt, for she heard (in the words of Exodus 3:16), "I have surely visited (פָּקֹד פָּקַדְתִּי‎, pakod pakadeti) you."

[102] Rabbi Eleazar interpreted the words, "And in you shall the families of the earth be blessed (וְנִבְרְכוּ‎, venivrechu)" in Genesis 12:3 to teach that God told Abram that God had two good shoots to graft (lihavrich) onto Abram's family tree: Ruth the Moabite (whom Ruth 4:13–22 reports was the ancestor of David) and Naamah the Ammonite (whom 1 Kings 14:21 reports was the mother of Rehoboam and thus the ancestor of good kings like Hezekiah).

Thus the words, "And it came to pass in those days of Amraphel, Arioch, Kenderlaomer, Tidal, Shemeber, Shinab, Backbrai, and Lama the kings of Shinar, Ellasar, Elam, Goiim, Zeboiim, Admah, Bela, and Lasha" in Genesis 14:1, are followed by the words, "they made war with Bera, Birsta, Nianhazel, and Melchizedek the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Zoar, and Salem" in Genesis 14:2.

Rav interpreted the words "And he armed his trained servants, born in his own house" in Genesis 14:14 to mean that Abram equipped them by teaching them the Torah.

Rabbi Jacob bar Aha said in the name of Rav Assi that this demonstrated that were it not for the Ma'amadot, groups of lay Israelites who participated in worship as representatives of the public, then heaven and earth could not endure.

Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai said that God showed Abraham all the atoning sacrifices except for the tenth of an ephah of fine meal in Leviticus 5:11.

[150] The Mishnah pointed to God's announcement to Abram in Genesis 15:16 that his descendants would return from Egyptian slavery to support the proposition that the merits of the father bring about benefits for future generations.

Maimonides reasoned that Abraham taught the people, brought many under the wings of the Divine Presence, and ordered members of his household after him to keep God's ways forever.

[177] Reading Genesis 15:12, "and a great, dark dread fell over him (Abraham)," Maimonides taught that when prophets prophesied, their limbs trembled, their physical powers became weak, they lost control of their senses, and thus their minds became free to comprehend what they saw.

Then, early in the 20th century, archaeologists began turning up evidence that seemed to confirm, or at least coincide with, elements of the Genesis narrative, including evidence of Abraham's hometown, Ur; legal practices, customs, and a way of life that suited the Abrahamic narratives; the names of cities like Haran, Nahur, Terah, Peleg, and Serug mentioned in Genesis; the movement of people throughout the area in the late 18th century BCE; and documentation of adoptions of mature adults and wives like Eliezer and Sarah.

Kugel concluded that most scholars now concede that the Abrahamic stories contain some very ancient material arguably going back to the 10th or 11th century BCE, transmitted orally, and then transformed into the present, prose formulations at a time that remains the subject of debate.

[193] Plaut reported that scholars generally agree that the term "Hebrew" (עִברִי‎, Ivri), as in Genesis 14:13, came from the name of a group called Habiru or Apiru, people who had lost their status in the community from which they came, and who were not necessarily related except by common fate.

The scribe, Rendsburg posited, was showing that David merely followed the precedent that the glorious ancestor Abraham set by tithing to a Canaanite priest in Jerusalem.

Belief and doubt, assent and opposition, in Mendelssohn's view, are not determined by desire, wishes, longings, fear, or hope, but by knowledge of truth and untruth.

Spinoza saw prophecy as a form of imagination, which did not, on its own, involve any certainty of truth, but required some extrinsic reason to assure its recipients of its objective reality.

Rendsburg cited this as further support for his conclusion that royal scribes living in Jerusalem during the reigns of David and Solomon in the tenth century BCE were responsible for Genesis.

Arguing that the only time that an author would need to justify kingship was when it was the new creation of Israelite political theorists, Rendsburg cited these verses as further evidence that royal scribes living in Jerusalem during the reigns of David and Solomon in the tenth century BCE were responsible for Genesis.

"[207] Some Jews refer to the ten trials of Abraham in Genesis 12–25 as they study chapter 5 of Pirkei Avot on a Sabbath between Passover and Rosh Hashanah.

[209] The Passover Haggadah, in the concluding nirtzah section of the Seder, in a reference to Genesis 14:15, recounts how God granted victory to the righteous convert Abram at the middle of the night.