For Avram to be righteous, he must follow G-d, and put his well practiced idolatrous ways behind him. He is bidden by G-d to leave his homeland and to journey to Canaan. He takes Lot, his nephew, with him.

While Avram has every good intention to follow the word of G-d, he finds that it is not easy. Keeping G-d’s word in a human world proves to be quite a difficult challenge. From his own nephew who rebels against him, to his own wife’s barrenness and subsequent cruelty to the son of a concubine, Avram is assailed. He withstands these challenges and makes a covenant with G-d. As a symbol of the covenant of Avraham, Jews have been circumcising males at the age of eight days (or upon conversion to Judaism) ever since.