Nehemiah 13:1-9 ▼

1 On that day there was read in the scroll of Moses, in the ears of the people, and it has been found written in it that an Ammonite and Moabite does not come into the assembly of God for all time,

2 because they have not come before the sons of Israel with bread and with water, and hire against them Balaam to revile them, and our God turns the reviling into a blessing.

3 And it comes to pass, at their hearing the Law, that they separate all the mixed people from Israel.

4 And before this Eliashib the priest, appointed over chambers of the house of our God, [is] a relation of Tobiah,

5 and he makes for him a great chamber, and there they were formerly putting the present, the frankincense, and the vessels, and the tithe of the grain, the new wine, and the oil—the commanded thing of the Levites, and the singers, and the gatekeepers—and the raised-offering of the priests.

6 And during all this I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I came to the king, and at the end of days I have asked of the king,

7 and I come to Jerusalem, and understand concerning the evil that Eliashib has done for Tobiah, to make to him a chamber in the courts of the house of God,

8 and it is very displeasing to me, and I cast all the vessels of the house of Tobiah outside, out of the chamber,

9 and I command, and they cleanse the chambers, and I bring back there the vessels of the house of God with the present and the frankincense.