1. Now on that day, they read from the book of Moses in the hearing of the people. And in it, there was found written that the Ammonites and the Moabites must not enter the church of God, even for all time,
2. because they did not meet the sons of Israel with bread and water, and they hired Balaam against them, to curse them. But our God turned the curse into a blessing.
3. Now it happened that, when they had heard the law, they separated every foreigner from Israel.
4. And Eliashib, the priest, was over this task; he had been given charge of the treasury of the house of our God, and he was a close relative of Tobiah.
5. Then he made for himself a large storeroom, and in that place, there was laid before him gifts, and frankincense, and vessels, and the tithes of grain, wine, and oil, the portions of the Levites, and of the singing men, and of the gatekeepers, and the first-fruits of the priests.
6. But during all this, I was not in Jerusalem, because in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes, the king of Babylon, I went to the king, and at the end of some days, I petitioned the king.
7. And I went to Jerusalem, and I understood the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, such that he would make him a storeroom in the vestibules of the house of God.