Tobit 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Tobit remembers the money he left in trust with Gabael at Rages in Media and calls his son Tobias so he can tell him about it before he dies. Before naming the money, he gives Tobias a long set of instructions: bury him and honor his mother, keep God's commands, give to the poor, marry within his father's tribe, pay a worker's wages at once, avoid drunkenness, ask advice of the wise, and bless God. He closes by telling Tobias about the ten talents left with Gabael son of Gabrias, and telling him not to be afraid because they have been made poor.

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • On that day Tobit remembered the money.
   • Tobit had committed that money in trust to Gabael.
   • Gabael was in Rages of Media.
2. 4:2
   • Tobit said to himself.
   • Tobit said he had wished for death.
   • Tobit asked why he did not call his son Tobias.
   • Tobit wanted to tell Tobias about the money.
   • Tobit wanted to do this before he died.
3. 4:3
   • Tobit called Tobias.
   • Tobit spoke to him.
   • Tobit addressed him as his son.
   • Tobit told him to bury him when he was dead.
   • Tobit told him not to despise his mother.
   • Tobit told him to honour his mother all the days of his life.
   • Tobit told him to do what pleased her.
   • Tobit told him not to grieve her.
4. 4:4
   • Tobit told Tobias to remember something.
   • Tobias's mother saw many dangers on his account while he was in her womb.
   • Tobit told Tobias to bury his mother beside him when she died.
   • Tobit told him to bury her in one grave with him.
5. 4:5
   • Tobit told Tobias to be mindful of the Lord their God all his days.
   • Tobit told him not to set his will to sin.
   • Tobit told him not to transgress God's commandments.
   • Tobit told him to do righteousness all his life long.
   • Tobit told him not to follow the ways of unrighteousness.
6. 4:6
   • If Tobias deals truly, his doings will prosper for him.
   • His doings will also prosper for all who do righteously.
7. 4:7
   • Tobit told Tobias to give alms from his possessions.
   • Tobit told him not to let his eye be envious when he gives alms.
   • Tobit told him not to turn his face away from any poor person.
   • The face of God will not be turned away from Tobias.
8. 4:8
   • If Tobias has abundance, he is to give alms in proportion to it.
   • If Tobias has only a little, he is not to be afraid to give alms according to that little.
9. 4:9
   • By giving alms Tobias lays up a good treasure for himself.
   • That treasure is for the day of necessity.
10. 4:10
    • Alms deliver from death.
    • Alms do not allow one to come into the darkness.
11. 4:11
    • Alms is a good gift for all who give it in the sight of the Most High.
12. 4:12
    • Tobit told Tobias to beware of all whoredom.
    • Tobit told him to take a wife from the seed of his fathers.
    • Tobit told him not to take a foreign woman as wife.
    • A foreign woman is one not of his father's tribe.
    • Tobit said they are the children of the prophets.
    • Tobit named Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as their fathers from of old.
    • Tobit told Tobias to remember that they all took wives from their own kindred.
    • They were blessed in their children.
    • Their seed will inherit the land.
13. 4:13
    • Tobit told Tobias to love his brethren.
    • Tobit told him not to be proud in his heart against his brethren and against the sons and daughters of his people.
    • Tobit told him to take a wife from among them.
    • In pride there is destruction.
    • In pride there is much trouble.
    • In worthless idleness there is decay and great want.
    • Worthless idleness is the mother of famine.
14. 4:14
    • The wages of any man who has worked for Tobias must not stay overnight with Tobias.
    • Tobias is to pay him at once.
    • If Tobias serves God, he will be repaid.
    • Tobit told Tobias to take heed to himself in all his works.
    • Tobit told him to be well instructed in all his behaviour.
15. 4:15
    • Tobias is to do to no man what he himself hates.
    • Tobias is not to drink wine to drunkenness.
    • Drunkenness is not to go with Tobias on his journey.
16. 4:16
    • Tobias is to give of his bread to the hungry.
    • Tobias is to give of his garments to those who are naked.
    • Tobias is to give alms out of whatever he has in excess.
    • Tobias is not to let his eye be envious when he gives alms.
17. 4:17
    • Tobias is to pour out his bread on the grave of the just.
    • Tobias is to give nothing to sinners.
18. 4:18
    • Tobias is to seek counsel from every wise person.
    • Tobias is not to despise any counsel that is useful.
19. 4:19
    • Tobias is to bless the Lord God at all times.
    • Tobias is to ask of God that his ways may be made straight.
    • Tobias is to ask that all his paths and counsels may prosper.
    • No nation has counsel of itself.
    • The Lord himself gives all good things.
    • The Lord humbles whom he will, as he will.
    • Tobit told Tobias to remember his commandments.
    • Tobit told him not to let them be blotted out of his heart.
20. 4:20
    • Tobit now informed Tobias about ten talents of silver.
    • Tobit had committed that silver in trust to Gabael.
    • Gabael was the son of Gabrias.
    • This was at Rages in Media.
21. 4:21
    • Tobit told Tobias not to fear that they had been made poor.
    • Tobias has much wealth, on conditions.
    • The condition is that Tobias fear God.
    • The condition is that Tobias depart from all sin.
    • The condition is that Tobias do what is pleasing in God's sight.

Words Worth Explaining

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

4:1

Media was the region of northwestern Iran, and Rages was a city near modern Tehran. It lay a very long way east of Nineveh, where Tobit was living as a deportee, which is why recovering the money later takes a journey of weeks. The money had been left with Gabael as a deposit for safekeeping, a normal arrangement in a world without banks.

4:2

Tobit had prayed to die in the previous chapter, after he was blinded and his wife accused him of hypocrisy. The King James "signify to him of the money" means simply to inform him about it.

4:3

Burial is the running concern of this book: Tobit's own risky work in the opening chapters was burying fellow Israelites whom the Assyrian king had executed and left unburied. To be left unburied was held to be a disgrace to the dead, so a son's duty to bury his parents was a serious obligation, not a sentiment.

4:4

Long ago, having a baby was dangerous for a mother. Tobit means his wife risked her life for Tobias.

4:5

Commands are God's rules. He gave them to his people long ago.

4:7

The King James word is "alms," which comes through Greek eleemosyne, a word built on the word for mercy. It means money, food or goods given to the poor, and it covers the whole practice, not one occasional gift. The King James "let not thine eye be envious" translates an idiom about a grudging or stingy eye, a person who gives while resenting the cost.

4:10

"The darkness" was a way of talking about the place of the dead, pictured as a dark world deep under the ground.

4:11

"The Most High" is a title for God. It means the one who is above everything and everyone else.

4:12

"Whoredom" renders Greek porneia, a broad word covering sexual conduct outside marriage generally, not prostitution alone. "Strange woman" in 1611 English means a foreign woman, one outside the family and tribe, with no suggestion of odd. "Noe" is the King James spelling of Noah, taken from the Greek form of the name. "Seed" throughout means offspring or descendants. Marrying within the kinship group mattered intensely to Israelites living as deportees in Assyria, where a scattered community could disappear into the surrounding population within a generation.

4:13

"Lewdness" did not mean sexual indecency in 1611 as reliably as it does now; the underlying Greek word means worthlessness or good for nothing behavior, closer to idle bad living than to obscenity. "Want" means lack or poverty. The claim that such living is "the mother of famine" is a proverb about a household wasting itself into hunger.

4:14

Israelite law required a hired laborer to be paid the same day he worked, because a day laborer had nothing to live on until he was paid. The King James "out of hand" means on the spot, immediately. "Conversation" in 1611 English means the whole conduct of a life, how a person behaves and moves among others, not talk. "Circumspect" means looking carefully around you before you act.

4:15

This is the negative form of the golden rule, phrased as a prohibition rather than a command. It circulated widely in Jewish and Greek moral teaching in this period. The warning about drunkenness on a journey is practical: a traveler on the road was already exposed to robbery and to strangers whose intentions he could not judge.

4:17

The Greek can be read two ways and translators still divide. It may mean placing food at the graves of the righteous dead, a widespread custom in the ancient Mediterranean, or it may mean providing the funeral meal for the mourners of an upright person. "The just" means the upright, those who lived rightly.

4:19

"For every nation hath not counsel" is a compressed and much debated line. The most common reading is that not every nation is given sound guidance, so good counsel is not something a person or people simply possesses. "Alway" is the older form of always. "Put out of thy mind" translates a word meaning blotted or wiped out, as writing is erased from a surface.

4:20

A talent was a weight, roughly seventy five pounds, so ten talents of silver was an enormous deposit, the earnings of many working lifetimes. Knowing the size of it explains why Tobit can tell his son in the next verse not to worry about their poverty. Some King James printings read "I signify this to they"; the sense is "to thee," that is, to you.

4:21

"Fear God" in this literature means reverence and obedience toward God rather than terror of him. The whole sentence turns on a contrast: the family's visible property is gone, but Tobit calls his son wealthy on other terms.