because they didn’t meet you with bread and with water on the way when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you.
A male Ammonite or Moabite shall not marry into the congregation of Israel
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־יָבֹא עַמּוֹנִי וּמוֹאָבִי בִּקְהַל יְהוָה גַּם דּוֹר עֲשִׂירִי לֹא־יָבֹא לָהֶם בִּקְהַל יְהוָה עַד־עוֹלָם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו מהתחתן בזכרי עמון ומואב לבד אפילו אחר הכנסם בדת. והוא אמרו יתעלה לא יבא עמוני ומואבי בקהל ה', והעובר על לאו זה לוקה כלומר שגר עמוני ומואבי כשבא על ישראלית בנשואין לוקין שניהם מן התורה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו ביבמות. (כי תצא למלחמה, שם):
That He prohibited us from marrying Ammonites and Moabites - exclusively the males - even after they have entered the [Jewish] religion. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "An Ammonite and a Moabite shall not come into the congregation of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 23:4). And one who transgresses this negative commandment - meaning when an Ammonite or Moabite convert has sexual relations with an Israelite in marriage - they are both lashed, by Torah law. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Yevamot. (See Parashat Ki Tetzei; Mishneh Torah, Forbidden Sexual Intercourse 12.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a prohibition
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
No applicability flags are recorded for this commandment.
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
- Lashes (malkot)
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Binding in principle
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 1QSa (1Q28a) 2:3-9 reinterpreted it Extends qahal-exclusion logic to physically disqualified and impure categories in the eschatological assembly rather than addressing the Ammon/Moab clause specifically
Rabbinic aggadah
- Ruth Rabbah 2:9 expanded it homiletically
- Ruth Rabbah 7:7-10 expanded it homiletically
Josephus
- Ant. 4.244 paraphrased it
The New Testament
- Matthew 1:5 reinterpreted it Includes Ruth the Moabitess in the genealogy of Jesus, foregrounding the canonical counter-narrative to the exclusion
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
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Article 26
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 26 prohibits discrimination on grounds of national origin; the commandment imposes a permanent hereditary exclusion from the Israelite marriage-community based solely on Ammonite or Moabite ethnic descent, constituting direct discrimination by national origin extended across generations.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
UDHR Article 7 guarantees equal protection against discrimination; the permanent, multigenerational exclusion of Ammonite and Moabite males from the community assembly on the basis of their national origin denies equal standing before the community on grounds prohibited by international human-rights norms.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The rabbinic interpretation restricts the exclusion to males (an Ammonite, not an Ammonitess), granting Ammonite and Moabite women immediate eligibility while subjecting men to permanent exclusion — a gender-differentiated community-membership rule that treats individuals differently on the basis of sex in the context of religious-civil standing.