God made a strong promise with Abram

1When Abram was 99 years old, God visited him and said, “I am God Most Powerful. I want you to live my way and do what I say is right.

2We will make a strong promise to each other, and I will give you a really big family.”

3Abram bowed down with his face on the ground and God said to him,

4“This is my side of the promise. You are going to be the father of many nations. A lot of people are going to come from you.

5And so, I am going to change your name. You are named Abram, which means Respected Father, but I will change your name to Abraham. Abraham means Father of Many Nations.

6Yes, I will give you a very big family and later on it will split into different nations. Some of your family will be the kings of those nations.

7I will make this promise with you and all the family that comes from you, and this promise will never end. I will be your God and I will be the God of all your family that comes from you.

8You Abraham will still live like a stranger in this country called Canaan, but later on, I will give this country to the families that come from you. They will have this country for themselves forever and I will be their God.”

9Then God said to Abraham, “You and all the families that come from you have to keep your side of our promise too. This is what you have to do. Every man and boy in your camp has to have the young men's ceremony.

11You all have to have that ceremony to show that we have made this promise together.

12Every boy born into your family from now on, must have that operation when they are 8 days old. Every man slave worker you got from somewhere else who lives in your camp has to have that ceremony too. Every boy born into a slave family must have that operation when they are 8 days old. And so, every man and boy in your camp must have the mark of that operation on their bodies. Abraham, those marks show that you and I made this promise together, a promise that will be true forever.

14Any man or boy that does not have that ceremony mark has broken our promise and will be sent away from his tribe.”

15Then God said to Abraham, “I am going to change your wife's name too. Her name is Sarai, but now you must name her Sarah.

16I will do a good thing for her and together you will have a son. Yes, I will do this good thing for her so that she will be called the Mother of Many Nations, and kings will come from her.”

17Abraham bowed down with his face on the ground again and laughed. He said to himself, “I am nearly 100 years old and Sarah is 90, how can we have a baby? We are too old.”

18And so Abraham said to God, “Might be, my son Ishmael can be the son you promised me.”

19But God said to Abraham, “Listen to me. What I say is true, Sarah will have a baby boy, and you will name him Isaac. He will be the one that gets all the promises I made to you. The promise I made with you, will be the same for him and for all the family that comes from him. And again I tell you, that promise will last forever.

20Abraham, you asked me about Ishmael. I will do good things for him too. I will make a way for him to have a really big family and 12 leaders will come from that family. In that way Ishmael's family will become a great nation.

21But I tell you, Sarah will have a baby boy about this time next year and when he is grown up, I will make the same promise with Isaac that I just made with you.”

22God said all this, and then he left Abraham.

23Straight away, on that same day, Abraham, Ishmael and every man and boy in Abraham's camp had that young men's ceremony. Even all the workers that were slaves from other countries had that operation too. Ishmael was 13 and Abraham was 99 years old when they had that ceremony.