The command leave your family and country has reversed the order of the words “country and family,” as they appear in the passage quoted from Genesis; but the Good News Translation has done this inasmuch as the command go to the land that I will show you more naturally follows after “country” than after “family.”

It is sometime difficult to translate the verb show by a term which may be used for revealing or showing objects, since a country does not fall into the same class of demonstrable things. One may be required, therefore, to translate as “the country I tell you to go to” or “the country I say is the right country for you to go to.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Acts of the Apostles. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1972. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .