(66)An Ammonite or Moabite shall never marry the daughter of an Israelite. “An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the assembly of Yahweh; even to the tenth generation none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of Yahweh forever, because they did not meet you with bread and water on the road when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. Nevertheless Yahweh your God would not listen to Balaam, but Yahweh your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because Yahweh your God loves you. You shall not seek their peace nor their prosperity all your days forever.” (Deuteronomy 23:3-6) Once again, we see the rabbis equating “entering the assembly of Yahweh” with marriage to a Jew. If it wasn’t clear before, it should be now: marriage has next to nothing to do with what He was really trying to help us understand. Here, I believe, the metaphor is a warning against compromise and accommodation with unbelievers—even if they’re our neighbors or relatives—if those unbelievers are actively attempting to lead us astray.

Moab and Ammon (bordering Israel’s Promised Land on the east) were the descendants of Lot, Abraham’s nephew. But by the time of the exodus, they had become so thoroughly pagan that their hostility to Yahweh’s people was guaranteed. The “Balaam episode” (Numbers 22-25) became the universal Biblical metaphor for false teaching leading to destruction (cf. Revelation 2:14). So here God tells His people not to have anything to do with them—do not allow their religion, their culture, their political presence, their commerce, and yes, even their bloodline, to have any part in the life of Israel—ever. (In an ironic twist that proves that the underlying symbol outweighs the plain reading of the mitzvah, Yahweh arranged for a godly Moabite woman, Ruth, to show up in the Messiah’s family tree—she was the great grandmother of King David. In Ruth’s case, of course, it was clear that she had turned her back on Moab and its gods in favor of Israel and Yahweh—Ruth 1:16) God’s instruction is to maintain our holiness, our separation from the world’s influence. As usual, Yahweh’s clear intention goes far beyond the face value of the mitzvah.