A little housekeeping: Joel informs me that there are multiple textual traditions for Tobit, which are discussed in detail here, in the New English Translation of the Bible. Which has excellent footnotes, by the way. Anyhoo, I’ll generally be ignoring textual issues and just following and adapting the KJV text of Tobit. But I just might make mention of textual issues from time to time.
We find Tobit where we left him last: blinded, drawing a pension, and bickering with his wife over a goat. And he has one of those moments that all followers of God experience, when we realize we just can’t handle life for ourselves and are in desperate need of God’s help:
1 Then, being grieved, wept and prayed in my sorrow, saying, 2 “O Lord, you are just, and all your works and all your ways are mercy and truth, and you judge truly and justly forever. 3 Remember me, and look on me, and do not punish me for my sins and ignorances, and the sins of my fathers who have sinned in your sight. 4 For they did not obey your commadments, for which reason you have delivered us up as a spoil, and into captivity, and to death, and as a proverb of reproach to all the goyim among whom we are dispersed. 5 And now you’re judgments are many and true; deal with me according to my sins and the sins of my fathers, because we have not kept your commandments, nor have we walked in truth in your sight. 6 So therefore do what seems best to you, and command my spirit to be taken from me, that I may be dissolved and become earth. For it is better for me to die than to live, because I have heard false reproaches, and I have great sorrow. Therefore command that I be delivered from this distress and go into everlasting peace–do not turn your face away from me.
There must certainly have been more going on with his life than just what the text has told us in ch. 2. It must be that the incident with the goat is just the last in a series of stressful incidents which have driven Tobit to wishing God would kill him. Note that his prayer sounds like the prayer of an unstable person, first begging mercy, and then the punishment of death–which he views, by the way, as eternal peace for himself. I can’t say whether Tobit had some notion of a heaven that he would go to, or just lack of life as a peaceful thing, rather like the afterlife of Ecclesiastes. And now the plotline leaves Tobit in his ragged state and turns to another, quite severe, problem.
7 And it happened that very day, that in Ecbatana, a city of Media, Sarah the daughter of Raguel was also reproached by her father’s maids, 8 because she had been married to seven husbands, whom Asmodeus the evil spirit had killed, before they had lain with her. “Don’t you know,” they said, “that you have strangled your husbands? You have already had seven husbands and have not been named after any of them. 9 So why do you beat us for them? If they are dead, go your way after them. Let us never see a son or daughter of yours.”
Now this is really interesting on several levels. First, the sudden plot shift to Ecbatana, which was a great deal eastward of where Tobit found himself. Secondly, there’s this whole business with the demon Asmodeus. I think it’s the case of the demon Asmodeus which has caused some Protestants to argue that there is witchcraft in the Apocryphal books, and that therefore they are evil books. But I can’t buy that explanation. It overlooks that very similar elements to this have appeared in other parts of what all Christians agree to be the Bible. Take, for example, the case of the seven sons of Sceva–another seven men who were viciously attacked by a single demon because they attempted exorcism without the proper authority. Or take the case where the Sadducees asked Jesus about the woman who outlives seven husband. Whose wife will she be in the afterlife, they asked? Could not the story they were quizzing Jesus on have been the story of Tobit. It seems plausible enough to me.
Finally, strangling must have been a really popular sort of killing for the author of Tobit. Or at least for the author of Tobit G I. For you see, two manuscripts of Tobit exist, as pointed out at the top of this page, which disagree as to some details of the story. So where 2:8 where the women use the word “strangled,” G II uses the word “killed.” So either “killed” is the original reading and someone later changed it to “strangled” to add parallelism, or maybe “strangled” is the original and somebody thought it was just too morbid to have the maids using such violent language. (According to Quentin Tarantino, strangling is the most violent human action.)
Notice also that Sarah bat Raguel is chronically childless. That’s the exact same problem Sarah bat Terah had in Genesis. Yet another literary parable to the Bible places Tobit squarely in the biblical tradition. But let’s go on now and see what happens to our Sarah. If her name is any indication, she will at last raise up a child through miraculous intervention. But we’ll see.
10 When [Sarah] heard these things she was deeply saddened, so that she considered strangling herself. And she said, “I am the only daughter of my father, and if I do this it will be an insult to him, and I will cause him to die sorrowful in his old age.
Wow. Strangling again. And another righteous person who, like Tobit, wishes to die.
11 Then she prayed toward the window
Like Daniel famously did in Daniel 6:10. I don’t know why it is that late Jewish literature has people praying toward windows. Anyhoo:
and said, “Blessed are you, O Lord my God, and your holy and glorious name is blessed and honorable forever. Let all your works praise you forever. 12 And now, O Lord, I direct my eyes and my face toward you, 13 and say, “Take me out of the hear, that I may no longer hear the reproach. 14 You know, Lord, that I am pur from all sin with man, 15 and that I never polluted my name nor the name of my father in the land of my captivity. I am the only daughter of my father, nor does he have any child to be his heir, nor any near relative, nor any son of his alive, to whom I may keep myself for a wife. My seven husbands are already dead, and why should I live? But if it is not pleasing to you that I should die, command some regard to be had of me, and pity taken upon me, that I may no more hear reproach.”
Now, that bit about her father not having a son she can wait for sounds awfully like incest. I’m not sure quite how to take that one. Perhaps she was considering the possibility of marrying a half-brother, like the Sarah of old. But that would be illegal anyhow. Or maybe she was considering simply living with the fellow like a wife would, so that she would not be an isolated widow. Or maybe by “my father” she means “my father-in-law” and is referring to the practice of levirate marriage. It is, after all, in the context of levirate marriage that a woman suspiciously like Sarah is discussed by Jesus and the Sadducees.
Moving on. We have spent the book so far establishing the Tobit and Sarah are quite godly and pious folks who are in deep trouble and want to die. Time for a ray of hope:
16 So the prayers of them both were heard before the Majesty of the Great God. 17 And Raphael was sent to heal them both, to scale away the whiteness of Tobit’s eyes, and to give Sarah the daughter of Raguel as a wife to Tobiyah the son of Tobit, and to bind Asmodeus the evil spirit; because she belonged to Tobiyah by right of inheritance. At this very moment came Tobit came home and entered his house, and Sarah bat Raguel came down from her upper chamber.
What a great two verses! For those who don’t know, Raphael is, in Jewish tradition, an arch-angel, rather like Michael or Gabriel. You’ll notice all their named end in El, which is a short name of God. So their names mean Michael, Who Is Like El; Gabriel, El is my Mighty One; and Raphael, El Heals. And don’t be offended by the appearances of an archangel in Tobit–the Bible never says there’s just two.
So I guess we’ve been told what going to happen. Over the rest of Tobit we’ll find out how.
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