“No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation. For they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram Naharaim to pronounce a curse on you. However, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you. Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them as long as you live.“-Deuteronomy 23:3-6
We’ve been discussing the Lord’s commands concerning why the Ammonites and Moabites were NOT allowed to enter into the assembly of Israel for 10 generations.
We’ve been studying the Torah together for about four years now and out of everything we’ve learned, the one thing that should be pretty crystal clear at this point is that one CANNOT have a relationship with God minus entering into a relationship with His Chosen People.
That is a non-negotiable.
Given this bedrock principle, let me ask you some hard questions.
How do you think God feels about that liberal portion of the gentile church that deliberates sides with the Muslim world against His people Israel?
Or how do you think the Lord feels about so-called believers who could care less about Israel and what happens to them?
Do you think such people have truly been grafted in to the commonwealth of Israel?
When we stand before the Jewish Messiah on the judgement day and he ask us “how did you treat my brethren?”, how will you be able to answer?
Getting back to our previous topic of the MAMZER, I’m sure many of you are aware that Ruth, an ancestor of Yeshua, was a Moabite or to be more technically accurate a “Moabitess”.
Now here’s the thing.
Ruth was a Moabitess who married an Israelite named Boaz.
The $64,000 question is…
…were their children MAMZERIM?
The answer is NO.
Why?
Simple, she converted to the religion of the Israelites.
And in those days, a Hebrew man was allowed to marry a foreign female convert (the opposite was NOT true however).
This is proof positive that NO nation was forever excluded from Israel
What exactly did Ruth do that allowed her to be grafted in?
She announced to Naomi, her Hebrew mother-in-law that…
“Your God shall be my God and your people shall be my people”.
The problem with most gentile believers is that they accept the first part of Ruth’s statement of “Your God shall be my God” but…
…they leave out the second part which says “your people shall be my people”.
Leaving out that part is NOT optional in God’s economy.
Once Ruth made that pronouncement, her days of living as a gentile ended for all time and forever and she became one with Israel.
In fact, her line became so grafted in that the Messiah himself descends from her line.
Can you believe that?
Indeed the Lord is no respecter of persons.
Either God is a liar… or that part of the Bible has been altered. I know there are many parts of the Bible that have been altered to justify the Edomites being accepted into the House of Israel.
Something I found fascinating is that it appears that Ruth might have been the 11th generation from Lot. (remember that’s where the moabites came from) I know there is no linage given for her, but if you go into the linage of Christ in Mathew and add up the generations from Abraham to Boaz it comes to 11. Since Ruth’s linage would be following the exact same timeline it could very easily be the same. The main question is when was the start of the count? Ten generations from what point?
Very interesting point Leonard. Thanks for sharing.
Deut 23:3 reads not even to the tenth generation… Never.
Both Ezra and Nehemiah understood this but somehow people today think the tenth generation applied to Moab and Ammon as well.
These are a cursed people with whom Israel is never to mix… same as the Canaanites.
So Yahveh didn’t keep His seed promise to Abraham and transferred it to the seed of Lot instead?