Nehemiah 13:2-5

The Voice

² This prohibition went back to the time when our ancestors wandered in the desert—when the Ammonites and the Moabites refused to welcome the Israelites with food and drink. In fact, they hired Balaam to curse them. But it didn’t work. God turned the curse into a blessing. ³ As soon as people heard what God’s law said, they excluded anyone with any non-Israelite descent from Israel.

^4-5 Before that happened, the priest named Eliashib took a large storeroom in the temple of God and gave it to Tobiah the Ammonite for his use. Eliashib was in charge of the storerooms, and Tobiah was a relative of his. Before he gave it to Tobiah, it had been used to store many different things for use in the temple: the grain offerings, the incense, the vessels, and the tithes of grain, new wine, and olive oil for the Levites, the singers, and the gatekeepers—also the offerings for the priests.