Summary
God creates the world in six days and consecrates the seventh after giving mankind his first commandment: "be fruitful and multiply". God pronounces the world "very good", but it becomes corrupted by the sin of man and God sends a deluge (a great flood) to destroy it, saving only the righteous (Noah) and his family, from whose seed the world is repopulated. Man sins again, but God has promised that he will not destroy the world a second time with water.
God instructs Abram (the future Abraham) to travel from his home in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) to the land of Canaan. There God makes a covenant with Abram promising that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the heavens, but that they shall suffer oppression in a foreign land for four hundred years, after which they shall inherit the land "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates." Abram's name is changed to Abraham and that of his wife Sarai to Sarah, and circumcision of all males is instituted as the sign of the covenant.
Sarah is barren, and tells Abraham to take her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar, as a concubine. Through Hagar, Abraham becomes the father of Ishmael. Abraham asks God that Ishmael "might live in Thy sight," (that is, be favored), but God replies that Sarah will bear a son, who will be named Isaac, through whom the covenant will be established. At Sarah's insistence Ishmael and his mother Hagar are driven out into the wilderness, but God saves them and promises to make Ishmael a great nation.
God resolves to destroy the city of Sodom for the sins of its people. Abraham protests that it is not just "to slay the righteous with the wicked," and asks if the whole city can be spared if even ten righteous men are found there. God replies: "For the sake of ten I will not destroy it." Abraham's nephew Lot is saved from the destruction of Sodom, and through incest with his daughters becomes the ancestor of the Moabites and Ammonites.
God tests Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice Isaac. As Abraham is about to lay the knife upon his son, God restrains him, promising him numberless descendants. On the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases Machpelah (modern Hebron) for a family tomb and sends his servant to Mesopotamia to find among his relations a wife for Isaac, and Rebekah is chosen. Other children are born to Abraham by another wife, Keturah, among whose descendants are the Midianites, and he dies in a prosperous old age and is buried in his tomb at Hebron.
Isaac's wife Rebekah is barren, but Isaac prays to God and she gives birth to the twins Esau, father of the Edomites, and Jacob. Through deception, Jacob becomes the heir instead of Esau and gains his father's blessing. He flees to his uncle where he prospers and earns his two wives. Jacob's name is changed to Israel, and by his wives Rachel and Leah and their handmaidens he has twelve sons, the ancestors of the twelve tribes of the Children of Israel.
Joseph, Jacob's favourite son, is sold into slavery in Egypt by his jealous brothers. But Joseph prospers, and when famine comes he brings his father and his brothers and their households, seventy persons in all, to Egypt, where Pharaoh assigns to them the land of Goshen. Jacob calls his sons to his bedside and reveals their future to them before he dies and is interred in the family tomb at Machpelah. Joseph lives to see his great-grandchildren, and on his death-bed he exhorts his brethren, if God should remember them and lead them out of the country, to take his bones with them. The book ends with Joseph's remains being "put in a coffin in Egypt."
Read more about this topic: Book Of Genesis
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