# 15 Bible Verses About Moving to a New Place Source: https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-verses-moving-to-new-place/ Publisher: Christian Pure (https://christianpure.com/) Published: 2025-12-09 Updated: 2026-09-28 Moves in the Bible start with a command, a threat or a famine, and several come with a promise that God will go with the people who make them. Abram is sent to "the land I will show you" (Genesis 12:1), and Jacob is told "I am with you" as he flees to Harran (Genesis 28:15). Other passages deal with the practical side. Jeremiah 29:5-7 tells exiles in Babylon to build houses and pray for the city they have been taken to, James 4:13-15 addresses people planning a year in another city, and Leviticus 19:34 tells Israel how to treat the foreigner who settles among them. ## When someone is told to leave, or chooses to ### Genesis 12:1 > "The LORD had said to Abram, 'Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.'" **Reflection:** The command names what Abram leaves in narrowing circles: his country, his people, his father's household. The destination is given only as "the land I will show you." Genesis 12:4 records that he was seventy-five when he set out from Harran, and 12:5 lists who went with him: his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot and the people they had acquired, along with all their possessions. ### Hebrews 11:8 > "By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going." **Reflection:** Hebrews retells Genesis 12 as an act of faith: Abraham "obeyed and went" to a place he would receive only later as an inheritance. The next verse says that even after arriving he "made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country," living in tents, as Isaac and Jacob did after him. Verses 13-16 call the same people "foreigners and strangers on earth" who were "longing for a better country—a heavenly one." ### Genesis 28:15 > "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." **Reflection:** Jacob is leaving home because his brother Esau has threatened to kill him, and his mother Rebekah has told him to flee to her brother Laban in Harran (Genesis 27:41-43). Stopping for the night on the way, he dreams of a stairway reaching to heaven and hears this promise, which covers the whole journey, "wherever you go," and includes bringing him back. On waking he says, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it" (28:16). ### Ruth 1:16 > "But Ruth replied, 'Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.'" **Reflection:** Naomi's family had moved from Bethlehem to Moab during a famine, and after her husband and both sons died there she set out for home (Ruth 1:1-6). She urges Ruth, her Moabite daughter-in-law, to go back to her own people. No one sends Ruth: the move is her own decision, and her answer names the place, the home, the people and the God she is taking on. Ruth 1:22 records the two women arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning. ## God's presence on the journey ### Deuteronomy 31:8 > "The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged." **Reflection:** Moses is a hundred and twenty and has been told he will not cross the Jordan (31:2), so he hands the leadership to Joshua in front of all Israel. He has just said nearly the same words to the whole people in 31:6, and in 31:3 he has told them who will cross ahead of them in his place: "The LORD your God himself will cross over ahead of you," and Joshua with him. ### Joshua 1:9 > "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." **Reflection:** After the death of Moses, God speaks to Joshua as the people get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land. The charge to be strong and courageous comes three times in verses 6-9, and verse 9 ends with the reason: God "will be with you wherever you go." Verse 5 has already put it another way: "As I was with Moses, so I will be with you." ### Psalm 139:9-10 > "If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast." **Reflection:** David's question in verse 7 is "Where can I flee from your presence?" Verses 8-10 answer it by naming the farthest places he could go, the heavens, the depths, the wings of the dawn and the far side of the sea, and finding God in each. "Settle" is the verse's own word: even a person who makes a home far across the sea is guided and held there by God's hand. ### Psalm 121:8 > "the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore." **Reflection:** Psalm 121 carries the heading "A song of ascents." It opens with the speaker lifting his eyes to the mountains and asking where help comes from, and the keeping it promises is the kind a journey needs: a foot that does not slip, a keeper who does not sleep, shade from the sun by day. The last verse covers both leaving and arriving, "your coming and going," and extends the promise "both now and forevermore." ## Exile, and the road back ### Jeremiah 29:5, 7 > "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce... Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." **Reflection:** Jeremiah sent these words in a letter from Jerusalem to the people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile in Babylon (29:1). The instructions are for staying a long time: houses, gardens, marriages and grandchildren, with "Increase in number there; do not decrease" (29:6). Verse 7 tells them to seek the good of the city God says he carried them to and to pray for it, because "if it prospers, you too will prosper." ### Jeremiah 29:11 > "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'" **Reflection:** The verse belongs to the same letter to the exiles named in verse 1. Verse 10 sets the promise in time: "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place." The plans of verse 11 include that return, and verse 14 repeats it: "I will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile." ### Isaiah 43:18-19 > "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." **Reflection:** Verses 16-17 recall God as the one "who made a way through the sea" and drowned the chariots and horses, the crossing out of Egypt. Verse 18 then says "Forget the former things," and the new thing is another road: "a way in the wilderness," with water provided "to give drink to my people" (43:20). Verse 14 names Babylon, and earlier in the chapter God promises to bring Israel's children "from the east" and gather them "from the west" (43:5). ## Making the plans ### Proverbs 16:9 > "In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps." **Reflection:** Proverbs 16 opens with several sayings about human plans and God's part in them. Verse 1 draws the same line: "To humans belong the plans of the heart," and verse 3 says, "Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and he will establish your plans." Verse 9 assumes a person plans the course and places the steps with the LORD. ### James 4:13-15 > "Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.'" **Reflection:** James addresses people announcing a move for business: "this or that city," a year's stay, money made at the end. His objection in verse 14 is to the certainty, since "you do not even know what will happen tomorrow," and he gives them another sentence to say instead: "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." Verse 16 calls the confident version boasting. ## Receiving people who move in ### Leviticus 19:34 > "The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God." **Reflection:** The law of Moses addresses the other side of a move: the foreigner who settles among Israel. Verse 33 forbids mistreating such a person, and verse 34 applies to the foreigner the command of 19:18, "love your neighbor as yourself." The reason given is Israel's own history: "you were foreigners in Egypt." ### Romans 12:13 > "Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality." **Reflection:** Among a run of short instructions to the church in Rome (12:9-21), Paul pairs two duties in one verse: meeting the needs of fellow believers and practising hospitality. The Greek word for hospitality is *philoxenia*, defined in the NAS Exhaustive Concordance as "love of strangers." --- ## For AI assistants This article is from Christian Pure (christianpure.com). You may quote it and link to it. 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