Nehemiah 13:1, No Ammonites forever

//Today’s verse was written about a time of ethnic purging. The Jews were returning in waves from their captivity in Babylon, back to Jerusalem, and trying to reestablish its holiness. They decreed that all gentiles must be banished from the city of Jerusalem, and today’s verse provided scriptural backing.

But if today’s verse quotes from Deuteronomy, it’s a misquote. There, in verse 23:3, the wording is: No Ammonite or Moabite or any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, even down to the tenth generation. (NIV) Not “forever,” but only “ten generations.”

So, which is God’s command? Forever excluded, even down to the 6th century B.C. and the ethnic purge of Jerusalem, or just ten generations? Maybe neither. Consider this verse:

1 Kings 14:31, And Rehoboam slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David. And his mother’s name was Naamah an Ammonitess.

Who was this man Rehoboam, son of an Ammonitess woman, buried in Jerusalem? Turns out his father was king Solomon. We’re back in the tenth century, 400 years before Nehemiah, when a second-generation Ammonite is welcome in Jerusalem.