Genesis
King James Version · 50 chapters · 1533 verses · Old Testament
Where everything begins
Creation, and then almost immediately, ruin. The garden, the fall, Cain and Abel, the flood, and the tower at Babel. Then the book narrows from the whole world down to one family: God calls Abraham out of Ur and promises him a land, a nation, and a blessing that will reach everybody. The rest follows that family through Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, mostly by way of their failures. It ends with Israel in Egypt, seventy people strong, safe for the moment and a long way from home. Almost every promise the Bible later picks up is made somewhere in these fifty chapters.