I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your presence, [I ask] that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, so that I may rebuild it.”

I said to them, “According to our ability we have redeemed (purchased back) our Jewish brothers who were sold to the [Gentile] nations; now would you even sell your brothers, that they might be sold to us?” Then they were silent and could not find a [single] word to say.

Then my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles, the officials, and the people to be registered by genealogy. Then I found the register of the genealogy of those who came [from Babylon] first, and I found the following record:

These men searched for their ancestral registration among those recorded in the genealogies, but it was not located; so they were excluded from the priesthood as [ceremonially] unclean.

They found written in the Law how the Lord had commanded through Moses that the Israelites should live in booths (huts) during the feast of the seventh month.

“You found his heart to be faithful before You,
And You made a covenant with him
To give him the land of the Canaanite,
Of the Hittite, of the Amorite,
Of the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Girgashite—
To give it to his descendants.
And You have fulfilled Your promise,
For You are righteous and just.

On that day they read aloud from the book of Moses so that the people could hear [its words], and in it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite could ever enter the assembly of God,