Deuteronomy 7:3

7:3 You must not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons,

Deuteronomy 23:3

23:3 An Ammonite or Moabite ¹  may not enter the assembly of the Lord; to the tenth generation none of their descendants shall ever ²  do so, ³ 

Deuteronomy 23:1

Purity in Public Worship

23:1 A man with crushed ⁴  or severed genitals ⁵  may not enter the assembly of the Lord. ⁶ 

Deuteronomy 11:1-2

Reiteration of the Call to Obedience

11:1 You must love the Lord your God and do what he requires; keep his statutes, ordinances, and commandments ⁷  at all times. 11:2 Bear in mind today that I am not speaking ⁸  to your children who have not personally experienced the judgments ⁹  of the Lord your God, which revealed ¹⁰  his greatness, strength, and power. ¹¹ 

[23:3]  ¹ sn An Ammonite or Moabite. These descendants of Lot by his two daughters (cf. Gen 19:30-38) were thereby the products of incest and therefore excluded from the worshiping community. However, these two nations also failed to show proper hospitality to Israel on their way to Canaan (v. 4).

[23:3]  ² tn The Hebrew term translated “ever” (עַד־עוֹלָם, ’ad-’olam) suggests that “tenth generation” (vv. 2, 3) also means “forever.” However, in the OT sense “forever” means not “for eternity” but for an indeterminate future time. See A. Tomasino, NIDOTTE 3:346.

[23:3]  ³ tn Heb “enter the assembly of the Lord.” The phrase “do so” has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[23:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “bruised by crushing,” which many English versions take to refer to crushed testicles (NAB, NRSV, NLT); TEV “who has been castrated.”

[23:1]  ⁵ tn Heb “cut off with respect to the penis”; KJV, ASV “hath his privy member cut off”; English versions vary in their degree of euphemism here; cf. NAB, NRSV, TEV, NLT “penis”; NASB “male organ”; NCV “sex organ”; CEV “private parts”; NIV “emasculated by crushing or cutting.”

[23:1]  ⁶ sn The Hebrew term translated “assembly” (קָהָל, qahal) does not refer here to the nation as such but to the formal services of the tabernacle or temple. Since emasculated or other sexually abnormal persons were commonly associated with pagan temple personnel, the thrust here may be primarily polemical in intent. One should not read into this anything having to do with the mentally and physically handicapped as fit to participate in the life and ministry of the church.

[11:1]  ⁷ tn This collocation of technical terms for elements of the covenant text lends support to its importance and also signals a new section of paraenesis in which Moses will exhort Israel to covenant obedience. The Hebrew term מִשְׁמָרוֹת (mishmarot, “obligations”) sums up the three terms that follow – חֻקֹּת (khuqot), מִשְׁפָּטִים (mishppatim), and מִצְוֹת (mitsot).

[11:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “that not.” The words “I am speaking” have been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[11:2]  ⁹ tn Heb “who have not known and who have not seen the discipline of the Lord.” The collocation of the verbs “know” and “see” indicates that personal experience (knowing by seeing) is in view. The term translated “discipline” (KJV, ASV “chastisement”) may also be rendered “instruction,” but vv. 2b-6 indicate that the referent of the term is the various acts of divine judgment the Israelites had witnessed.

[11:2]  ¹⁰ tn The words “which revealed” have been supplied in the translation to show the logical relationship between the terms that follow and the divine judgments. In the Hebrew text the former are in apposition to the latter.

[11:2]  ¹¹ tn Heb “his strong hand and his stretched-out arm.”