until the Canaanite borders reached from Sidon southward to Gerar near Gaza, and eastward to Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim near Lasha.

There were Ashdod and Gaza, with their towns and villages, reaching to the stream on the border of Egypt and the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

He went over to her at the side of the road and said, "All right, how much do you charge?" (He did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.) She said, "What will you give me?"

"What shall I give you as a pledge?" he asked. She answered, "Your seal with its cord and the walking stick you are carrying." He gave them to her. Then they had intercourse, and she became pregnant.

After all this had been done, some of the leaders of the people of Israel came and told me that the people, the priests, and the Levites had not kept themselves separate from the people in the neighboring countries of Ammon, Moab, and Egypt or from the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, and Amorites. They were doing the same disgusting things which these people did.

Jewish men were marrying foreign women, and so God's holy people had become contaminated. The leaders and officials were the chief offenders.