Genesis 12:1-3 The call of Avram (Abram) is both significant and extraordinary. In Genesis 12:1-3 God tell Avram to leave his home and go to a land he does not know: “Get yourself out of your country, away from your kinsmen and away from your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you” (Gen 12:1). God’s command to “go, go forth” (lekh l’kha) is both emotional and geographical for Avram. In leaving Ur (Gen 15:7), his country of origin, Avram abandons his home, birthplace, family, friends, and the security of his father’s house and even aqn inheritance. The sage Rashi notes that ibn Hebrew the phrase lekh l’kha carries a weight of urgency when God commands, “Go, go forth, go by yourself, do not hesitate – but go immediately!”
The sages all concur that Avram’s departure and the abandonment of his old life was abrupt. This is comparable to Yeshua’s call to the disciples who immediately left their nets to follow him (Matt 4:20). In taking Avram out from the nations, God commissioned him and his descendants after him (the Jewish people) to be a blessing to the entire world (Gen 12:2). In calling Avram away from Ur and all that he knew, God commissioned him and his descendants to be “holy” or “set apart” (kadosh) for his use. This defines the Abrahamic calling in which the responsibility of Israel – and the Messianic Jew today – is to the nations so that salvation might spread to the ends of the earth (Isa 49:6). Initially, there were no Jews until God called Avram, a Hebrew, to be the physical father of the Jewish people and spiritual father of both Jews and Christians.
For more on “Jewish-Gentile Relations,” see reading at Genesis 28:14.