Tobit 13: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Tobit writes a prayer of rejoicing that blesses God, who both punishes and shows mercy and whose hand no one escapes. He calls the children of Israel, scattered among the Gentiles, to give thanks to God there, and says God will punish them for their sins, show mercy again, and gather them from the nations; if they turn to him with a whole heart, he will turn to them. The prayer then speaks to Jerusalem about being punished and receiving mercy, about nations coming from far away with gifts, and about the city rebuilt with precious stones and gold, its streets saying Alleluia.

Claim by Claim

1. 13:1
   • Tobit wrote a prayer of rejoicing.
   • Tobit spoke the prayer.
   • The prayer declares God blessed.
   • God lives forever.
   • The prayer declares God's kingdom blessed.
2. 13:2
   • God scourges.
   • God has mercy.
   • God leads down to the realm of the dead.
   • God brings up again.
   • No one can escape God's hand.
3. 13:3
   • The children of Israel are told to confess God before the Gentiles.
   • God has scattered Israel among the Gentiles.
4. 13:4
   • Israel is told to declare God's greatness there.
   • Israel is told to extol God before all the living.
   • God is our Lord.
   • God is our Father forever.
5. 13:5
   • God will scourge us for our iniquities.
   • God will have mercy again.
   • God will gather us out of all nations.
   • God scattered us among those nations.
6. 13:6
   • If you turn to God with your whole heart, and with your whole mind, and deal uprightly before him, then he will turn to you.
   • If you turn to God in that way, he will not hide his face from you.
   • The hearers are told to see what God will do with them.
   • The hearers are told to confess God with their whole mouth.
   • The hearers are told to praise the Lord of might.
   • The hearers are told to extol the everlasting King.
   • The speaker praises God in the land of his captivity.
   • The speaker declares God's might and majesty to a sinful nation.
   • Sinners are told to turn.
   • Sinners are told to do justice before God.
   • No one knows whether God will accept them and have mercy on them.
7. 13:7
   • The speaker will extol his God.
   • The speaker's soul will praise the King of heaven.
   • The speaker's soul will rejoice in God's greatness.
8. 13:8
   • All men are told to speak.
   • All are told to praise God for his righteousness.
9. 13:9
   • Jerusalem is the holy city.
   • God will scourge Jerusalem for her children's works.
   • God will have mercy again on the sons of the righteous.
10. 13:10
    • Jerusalem is told to give praise to the Lord.
    • The Lord is good.
    • Jerusalem is told to praise the everlasting King.
    • God's tabernacle may be built in Jerusalem again with joy.
    • God may make the captives joyful in Jerusalem.
    • God may love the miserable in Jerusalem forever.
11. 13:11
    • Many nations shall come from far to the name of the Lord God.
    • Those nations shall have gifts in their hands.
    • The gifts are for the King of heaven.
    • All generations shall praise Jerusalem with great joy.
12. 13:12
    • All who hate Jerusalem are cursed.
    • All who love Jerusalem forever shall be blessed.
13. 13:13
    • Jerusalem is told to rejoice and be glad for the children of the just.
    • The children of the just shall be gathered together.
    • The children of the just shall bless the Lord of the just.
14. 13:14
    • Those who love Jerusalem are blessed.
    • They shall rejoice in Jerusalem's peace.
    • Those who have been sorrowful for all Jerusalem's scourges are blessed.
    • They shall rejoice for Jerusalem when they have seen all her glory.
    • They shall be glad forever.
15. 13:15
    • The speaker calls on his soul to bless God the great King.
16. 13:16
    • Jerusalem shall be built up with sapphires, emeralds, and precious stone.
    • Jerusalem's walls, towers, and battlements shall be built with pure gold.
17. 13:17
    • The streets of Jerusalem shall be paved with beryl, carbuncle, and stones of Ophir.
18. 13:18
    • All Jerusalem's streets shall say, Alleluia.
    • They shall praise God.
    • They shall say that God is blessed.
    • God has extolled it forever.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

13:1

"Blessed be God" does not mean someone is granting God a blessing. In older English "bless" used of God simply means praise or speak well of, so the line means "May God be praised." The chapter that follows is a hymn or psalm rather than narrative: Tobit stops telling the story and sings.

13:2

"Scourge" meant to whip or flog, and by extension to punish severely; the rendering uses "punishes." Where the King James says "hell," the Greek word is Hades, the underworld where all the dead were thought to go, good and bad alike. It is a name for the state of death itself, not for a place of torment, which is why the rendering says "the place of the dead."

13:3

"Confess him" in 1611 English meant to acknowledge him openly, and the Greek word behind it means to give thanks or publicly praise. It has nothing to do with confessing sins. "Gentiles" means the non-Jewish nations. Tobit speaks as a deportee: he and other Israelites from the northern kingdom had been carried off by the Assyrians and settled in their territory, so the audience for Israel's praise is now foreign.

13:4

The King James word "extol" means to praise someone very highly, out loud and in public.

13:5

The scattering and the gathering are the two halves of a single hope running through this prayer: exile as punishment, and a future return of the dispersed people to their own land.

13:6

"Hide his face" is a standard Hebrew idiom for withdrawing attention and favor, the way a person turns away from someone they will not deal with. Its opposite, turning toward you, means renewed favor. "The land of my captivity" is Assyria, where Tobit is living as a deportee.

13:7

The King James says "my soul." A soul is the deepest part of a person, who you really are.

13:8

The Greek manuscripts differ here. The text the King James translators followed ends "praise him for his righteousness"; other manuscripts read "give him thanks in Jerusalem," which is why modern translations often look different at this verse.

13:9

The city is addressed directly, as a person, and "thy children" means its inhabitants, present and past. The thought is that Jerusalem suffers for what the people living in it did.

13:10

"Tabernacle" translates a word meaning tent or dwelling. It looks back to the portable tent shrine Israel carried in the wilderness, but here it means the temple in Jerusalem, destroyed by the Babylonians and hoped to be rebuilt. The speaker is picturing a restored temple standing in a restored city.

13:11

Foreign nations arriving with gifts is a stock image in Israel's prophetic poetry for Jerusalem's future honor. "To the name of the Lord God" means to the place where his name was said to dwell, that is, the temple.

13:12

A curse is words asking for bad things to happen to someone. Being blessed is the opposite. It means good things and God's kindness.

13:13

"The just" means people who do what is right and fair.

13:14

"Thy scourges" means the punishments the city underwent. The blessing falls on those who mourned during the disaster, because they will still be there for the recovery.

13:16

The stone the King James calls "sapphire" was most likely lapis lazuli, a deep blue stone, rather than the gem we now call sapphire. "Battlements" are the notched parapets along the top of a defensive wall, the gaps that archers shot through. The picture is an ordinary fortified city rebuilt in gemstone and gold.

13:17

"Beryl" is a pale green or blue-green gem. A "carbuncle" in older English is any deep red stone, usually a garnet, named for its glowing coal color. Ophir was a distant land, its location now unknown, famous in Israelite tradition as the source of the finest gold and precious stones.

13:18

"Alleluia" is the Hebrew phrase hallelu-yah carried over untranslated: "praise Yah," a short form of the divine name. The King James "hath extolled it" refers to the city; other Greek manuscripts read "has exalted you," keeping the direct address to Jerusalem that runs through the rest of the hymn.