Lech Lecha summary: Abraham's story in plain English
By the My Daily Torah team · Updated · Read on Shabbat,
This week in short
Lech Lecha is the third weekly Torah portion, Genesis 12 to 17. God tells Abram to leave home for a land he hasn't seen yet. The story runs through a famine, a split with his nephew Lot, a rescue mission, the birth of Ishmael and two new names, Abraham and Sarah. In 2026 it's read on Shabbat, October 24.
What is Lech Lecha?
Every week, synagogues read the next portion of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, and they finish the whole thing in a year. Lech Lecha is the third portion: Genesis 12 to 17.
The name comes from the first words God says to Abram (he gets the name Abraham later in this portion). It means "go," and word for word it reads "go, for yourself."
Why does Abram leave home, and what goes wrong in Egypt?
״אל נא תהי מריבה ביני ובינך ובין רעי ובין רעיך כי אנשים אחים אנחנו״
“Please, let's not fight, not you and me, and not my shepherds and yours. We're family.”
God tells Abram, a 75-year-old living in Haran (in what's now southern Turkey), to pack up and go. He takes his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot and everything they own, and heads to Canaan, roughly where Israel is today. God promises the land to his descendants.
Almost right away there's a famine, so they go down to Egypt. Abram is afraid the Egyptians will kill him to get his beautiful wife, so he asks Sarai to say she's his sister. Pharaoh, Egypt's king, takes her into his palace, God hits Pharaoh's household with plagues, and Pharaoh sends them off with a furious "Why didn't you tell me she was your wife?"
Back in Canaan, Abram and Lot have both gotten rich, and their shepherds keep fighting over grazing land. Abram's fix is generous: let's split up, and you choose first. Lot picks the green Jordan valley and settles near Sodom, a city the Torah calls very wicked.
A war, a rescue and a promise under the stars
״הבט נא השמימה וספר הכוכבים אם תוכל לספר אתם״
“Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can.”
Four kings invade the region, beat the king of Sodom and his allies, and carry Lot off as a prisoner. Abram gathers 318 men from his household, chases the invaders north past Damascus in a night attack and brings Lot and the other captives home.
Melchizedek, the king of Salem and a priest, meets him with bread and wine and a blessing. The king of Sodom offers Abram the recovered loot. Abram refuses all of it, "not a thread or a sandal strap," so nobody can ever say Sodom made him rich.
Then God tells Abram not to be afraid. Abram, still childless, pushes back: what good is a reward if a servant ends up inheriting everything? God takes him outside, points at the night sky and says his descendants will be as many as the stars. Abram trusts him.
God also makes a covenant, a binding promise, with Abram, and warns that his descendants will be strangers and slaves in a foreign land for 400 years before they go free.
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Hagar, Ishmael and two new names
״ותקרא שם ה׳ הדבר אליה אתה אל ראי״
“She gave a name to God, who had spoken to her: "You are the God who sees me."”
After ten years in Canaan there's still no baby. Sarai gives Abram her Egyptian servant Hagar so she can have a child through her. Hagar gets pregnant, the two women clash, Sarai treats her harshly and Hagar runs away into the desert.
An angel finds her at a spring, sends her back and tells her to name her son Ishmael, meaning "God hears." Hagar, a pregnant servant on the run, ends up giving God a name of her own.
Abram is 86 when Ishmael is born. At 99, God renames him Abraham, "father of many nations," and renames Sarai as Sarah. God makes circumcision the sign of the covenant, done when a baby boy is eight days old, and that's where the Jewish bris comes from.
God says Sarah will have a son named Isaac. Abraham falls on his face laughing, since he's almost 100 and she's 90. That same day he circumcises himself, 13-year-old Ishmael and every male in his household.
The line worth slowing down for
״לך לך מארצך וממולדתך ומבית אביך אל הארץ אשר אראך״
“Go. Leave your country, the place you were born and your father's house, and go to the land I'm going to show you.”
The whole portion hangs on its first sentence, and the surprising part is what's missing. God spells out exactly what Abram has to leave: his country, his birthplace, his father's house. Where's he going? "The land I'll show you." That's all he gets.
No address, no map, no preview. He's 75, and he goes anyway. God only gets specific once Abram is already standing in Canaan.
That's how most big moves feel in real life. You know exactly what you're walking away from, down to the apartment and the people, and where you're headed stays blurry until you're halfway there.
A question to think about this Shabbat
Abram knew what he was leaving long before he knew where he was going. As Shabbat (the weekly day of rest, Friday night to Saturday night) comes around, ask yourself this: what would you leave (a job, a city, a habit) if you didn't need to see the whole map first?
Questions people ask
When is Parshat Lech Lecha read in 2026?
In 2026, Lech Lecha is read in synagogue on Shabbat, October 24. It's the third weekly portion of the year, covering Genesis 12:1 to 17:27, and it always comes in the fall, a few weeks after the yearly Torah reading starts over on Simchat Torah.
What does Lech Lecha mean in Hebrew?
Lech means "go" and lecha means "for you," so word for word the phrase reads "go, for yourself." It's usually translated "go forth." These are the first words God says to Abram in Genesis 12:1, telling him to leave his country and family for a land he hasn't seen yet.
Where can I read the Lech Lecha text?
It's Genesis chapters 12 through 17, so you can read it in any Bible. Free Hebrew and English versions are also online, for example on Sefaria, a free online library of Jewish texts. It opens with God's call to Abram and ends with the circumcision of Abraham and Ishmael.
Is there a Lech Lecha dessert idea?
There's no traditional Lech Lecha food, but a dessert that tells the story is a fun way to bring it to the Shabbat table. Star-shaped cookies for God's promise under the night sky (Genesis 15:5) are the easy pick. A cookie "map" with no destination marked fits the opening line.
Sources
Every Hebrew line on this page is copied word for word from the source and checked against Sefaria, the free online library of Jewish texts. The English is our own translation.