Tobit 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Tobit, grieved, prays: he calls the Lord just, admits the sins of his people and his fathers, and asks to be allowed to die rather than keep hearing false insults. On the same day, in Ecbatana of Media, Sarah the daughter of Raguel is insulted by her father's maids, because seven husbands have died at the hand of Asmodeus the evil spirit before the marriages were consummated; she thinks about hanging herself, and then prays instead, asking either to die or to be pitied and freed from insults. Both prayers are heard, and Raphael is sent to heal Tobit's eyes, to give Sarah to Tobias as wife, and to bind Asmodeus. At that same moment Tobit comes home and Sarah comes down from her upstairs room.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • The speaker was grieved and wept.
   • The speaker prayed in sorrow.
   • The speaker spoke the following words in that prayer.
2. 3:2
   • The speaker addressed the Lord as just.
   • The speaker said all the Lord's works are mercy and truth.
   • The speaker said all the Lord's ways are mercy and truth.
   • The speaker said the Lord judges truly and justly forever.
3. 3:3
   • The speaker asked the Lord to remember him.
   • The speaker asked the Lord to look on him.
   • The speaker asked the Lord not to punish him for his sins.
   • The speaker asked the Lord not to punish him for his ignorances.
   • The speaker asked the Lord not to punish him for the sins of his fathers.
   • The speaker said his fathers had sinned before the Lord.
4. 3:4
   • The speaker said his fathers did not obey the Lord's commandments.
   • The speaker said the Lord had delivered them to be plundered.
   • The speaker said the Lord had delivered them to captivity.
   • The speaker said the Lord had delivered them to death.
   • The speaker said the Lord had made them a proverb of reproach to all the nations.
   • The speaker said they were dispersed among those nations.
5. 3:5
   • The speaker said the Lord's judgments are many.
   • The speaker said the Lord's judgments are true.
   • The speaker asked the Lord to deal with him according to his sins and his fathers' sins.
   • The speaker said they had not kept the Lord's commandments.
   • The speaker said they had not walked in truth before the Lord.
6. 3:6
   • The speaker asked the Lord to deal with him as seemed best to the Lord.
   • The speaker asked the Lord to command his spirit to be taken from him.
   • The speaker asked to be dissolved and become earth.
   • The speaker said it was better for him to die than to live.
   • The speaker said he had heard false reproaches.
   • The speaker said he had much sorrow.
   • The speaker asked to be delivered out of his distress now.
   • The speaker asked to go into the everlasting place.
   • The speaker asked the Lord not to turn his face away from him.
7. 3:7
   • On the same day something happened to Sara.
   • Sara was the daughter of Raguel.
   • Sara was in Ecbatane, a city of Media.
   • Sara was reproached by her father's maids.
8. 3:8
   • Sara had been given to seven husbands.
   • Asmodeus, the evil spirit, had killed those husbands.
   • The husbands were killed before they had lain with her.
   • The maids asked Sara whether she did not know she had strangled her husbands.
   • The maids said she had already had seven husbands.
   • The maids said she was not named after any of them.
   • The maids asked why she beat them.
   • The maids said that if her husbands were dead she should go after them.
   • The maids said they wished never to see a son or daughter of hers.
9. 3:9
   • The maids asked why she beat them.
   • The maids said that if the husbands were dead she should go after them.
   • The maids wished never to see either son or daughter of hers.
10. 3:10
    • Sara heard these things.
    • Sara became very sorrowful.
    • Sara thought to strangle herself.
    • Sara said she was the only daughter of her father.
    • Sara said that if she did this it would be a reproach to her father.
    • Sara said she would bring her father's old age with sorrow to the grave.
11. 3:11
    • Sara prayed toward the window.
    • Sara said the Lord her God is blessed.
    • Sara said the Lord's holy and glorious name is blessed and honourable forever.
    • Sara asked that all the Lord's works praise him forever.
12. 3:12
    • Sara said she set her eyes toward the Lord.
    • Sara said she set her face toward the Lord.
13. 3:13
    • Sara asked to be taken out of the earth.
    • Sara asked that she might hear the reproach no more.
14. 3:14
    • Sara said the Lord knows she is pure from all sin with man.
15. 3:15
    • Sara said she never polluted her own name.
    • Sara said she never polluted her father's name.
    • Sara said this was so in the land of her captivity.
    • Sara said she is the only daughter of her father.
    • Sara said her father has no child to be his heir.
    • Sara said her father has no near kinsman.
    • Sara said her father has no son alive for whom she might keep herself as a wife.
    • Sara said her seven husbands are already dead.
    • Sara asked why she should live.
    • Sara said that if it does not please the Lord that she should die, he should command that regard be had of her.
    • Sara asked that pity be taken of her.
    • Sara asked that she hear no more reproach.
16. 3:16
    • The prayers of both of them were heard.
    • Their prayers were heard before the majesty of the great God.
17. 3:17
    • Raphael was sent to heal them both.
    • Raphael was sent to scale away the whiteness of Tobit's eyes.
    • Raphael was sent to give Sara the daughter of Raguel as a wife to Tobias the son of Tobit.
    • Raphael was sent to bind Asmodeus the evil spirit.
    • Sara belonged to Tobias by right of inheritance.
    • At that same time Tobit came home and entered his house.
    • At that same time Sara the daughter of Raguel came down from her upper chamber.

Words Worth Explaining

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

3:1

Tobit is telling his own story here, so "I" means Tobit. He has gone blind and has just been hurt by angry words at home.

3:3

"My fathers" means his ancestors, the family members who lived long before him. People then often spoke of a whole family sharing its wrongs.

3:4

Tobit is speaking as one of the Israelites deported from the northern kingdom by the Assyrians; he is writing from Nineveh. "A proverb of reproach" in the King James means a standing example of disgrace, the name other nations reach for when they want to point at a ruined people.

3:6

"The everlasting place" translates a Greek phrase for the abode of the dead, the permanent dwelling where everyone who dies goes. Tobit is asking to die, not describing a reward.

3:7

The book switches here from Tobit's first-person account to a narrator describing events elsewhere on the same day. Ecbatana was the chief city of Media, in the highlands of what is now western Iran, a long journey east of Nineveh. Sara and her father Raguel are fellow Israelite exiles, and distant relatives of Tobit's family.

3:8

Asmodeus is the name of a demon, known in Jewish tradition and often connected with a Persian spirit of rage; the name itself would have carried menace to the first readers. "You have not been named after any one of them" is ambiguous in the Greek: it can mean that Sara never came to bear a husband's name as his wife, since none of the marriages was consummated, or that she bore no child to carry a husband's name forward.

3:9

"Go and follow them" means go join them in death. The servants are telling Sara to kill herself.

3:10

"Bring his old age down to the grave in sorrow" was a common way of saying that grief would kill her elderly father.

3:11

Praying at an open window was the customary posture of Jews living in exile, who turned toward Jerusalem to pray. The detail marks Sara as devout, and mirrors Tobit praying in Nineveh at the same hour.

3:13

"Take me out of the earth" is an idiom for dying: release me from life in this world. She is asking God to end her life, as Tobit did in verse 6.

3:14

"Clean of any sin with a man" is a denial of sexual wrongdoing: Sara is saying she is a virgin and has done nothing that could explain the deaths. It answers the accusation behind the servants' taunts.

3:15

Under the inheritance customs assumed here, a man with no son passed his property through his daughter, and she was expected to marry within her father's kindred so the family holding stayed in the clan. Sara is saying there is no eligible kinsman left for whom she could be reserved as a wife, which leaves both her future and her father's line with nowhere to go.

3:16

"Glory" means how great and shining God is.

3:17

Raphael is an angel whose name means "God heals," which is exactly the errand described here. The "whiteness" of Tobit's eyes is a white film over the eye, like a cataract, which the King James pictures being scaled or peeled off. "By right of inheritance" means Tobias is Sara's nearest eligible kinsman, so the claim to marry her falls to him.