Nehemiah 13:2
Because they met not the children of Israel with bread and with water, but hired Balaam against them, that he should curse them: howbeit our God turned the curse into a blessing. Because they met not the children of Israel with bread and with water, but hired Balaam against them, that he should curse them: howbeit our God turned the curse into a blessing.
Through Moses God gave command that the Ammonite and the Moabite were shut out of the congregation of His people forever. The reason was that they did not meet the children of Israel with bread and with water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them, and this was cruelty and treachery toward Israel. That exclusion was not spent but was still binding in Nehemiah's day. Tobiah the Ammonite was therefore a prohibited and proscribed man, a bitter enemy of Israel who was to have no place among God's people.
Eliashib the high priest defied that word by alliance with Tobiah, being joined to him in an unhallowed alliance by intermarriage. He cast the tithes and offerings out of the chamber of the temple storeroom in order to make a dwelling there for Tobiah. To favor Tobiah in this way was to side with an enemy of God and of His truth, and to contaminate the very precincts of the temple, showing the greatest contempt for God. What obedience to the command required was what Nehemiah did in his grief: he cast out all Tobiah's household goods, cleansed the chambers, and restored the vessels of the house with the grain offering and the frankincense.