1. On that day the book of Moses was read in the hearing of the people and it was found written in it that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever come into the assembly of God
2. because they did not come to meet the Israelites with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them in order to curse them—but our God changed the curse into a blessing.
3. So it happened when they heard the law that they separated all of the foreign people from Israel.
4. Before this, Eliashib the priest who was appointed over the chambers of the house of our God—the one related to Tobiah—
5. prepared for Tobiah a large chamber where they had formerly put the grain offering, the frankincense, the temple objects, tithes of grain, wine, and oil commanded for the Levites, the singers, the gatekeepers, and the offerings of the priests.
6. During all of this, I was not in Jerusalem because in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I went to the king. At the end of some days I asked permission from the king to leave.
7. So I came to Jerusalem. And I came to learn of the wrong that Eliashib had done for Tobiah by making him a room in the courtyard of the house of God.
8. It was very displeasing for me, and I threw all of the objects from the house of Tobiah outside of the chamber.
9. And I spoke in order, and they cleansed the chambers. Then I returned the objects of the house of God—the grain offering and the frankincense.
10. And then I came to learn that the food of the Levites had not been given to them, so that the Levites and the singers, the doers of the work, had gone back each to his field.