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When the Law of Moses was being read aloud to the people, they came to the passage that said that no Ammonite or Moabite was ever to be permitted to join God's people.
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This was because the people of Ammon and Moab did not give food and water to the Israelites on their way out of Egypt. Instead, they paid money to Balaam to curse Israel, but our God turned the curse into a blessing.
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When the people of Israel heard this law read, they excluded all foreigners from the community.
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The priest Eliashib, who was in charge of the Temple storerooms, had for a long time been on good terms with Tobiah.
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He allowed Tobiah to use a large room that was intended only for storing offerings of grain and incense, the equipment used in the Temple, the offerings for the priests, and the tithes of grain, wine, and olive oil given to the Levites, to the Temple musicians, and to the Temple guards.
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While this was going on, I was not in Jerusalem, because in the thirty-second year that Artaxerxes was king of Babylon I had gone back to report to him. After some time I received his permission
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and returned to Jerusalem. There I was shocked to find that Eliashib had allowed Tobiah to use a room in the Temple.
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I was furious and threw out all of Tobiah's belongings.
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I gave orders for the rooms to be ritually purified and for the Temple equipment, grain offerings, and incense to be put back.
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I also learned that the Temple musicians and other Levites had left Jerusalem and gone back to their farms, because the people had not been giving them enough to live on.
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I reprimanded the officials for letting the Temple be neglected. And I brought the Levites and musicians back to the Temple and put them to work again.