Chapter Three

1–6. Prayer of Tobit to God for deliverance from suffering. 7–15. A similar prayer of Sarah, daughter of Raguel in Ecbatana of Media. 16–17. The prayers of both were heard, and the Angel Raphael was sent for their salvation.

Tobit 3:1. Being grieved, I wept and prayed in sorrow, saying: Tobit 3:2. Just are You, O Lord, and all Your deeds and all Your ways are mercy and truth, and You judge with true and righteous judgment forever. Tobit 3:3. Remember me and look upon me: do not punish me for my sins and the mistakes I have made and the errors of my fathers, which they committed before You. Tobit 3:4. For they did not listen to Your commandments, and You delivered us to plunder and captivity and death, and as a byword and a reproach to all the nations among which we are scattered. Tobit 3:5. And now, in truth, many and righteous are Your judgments—to deal with me according to my sins and the sins of my fathers, because they did not keep Your commandments and did not walk in righteousness before You. Tobit 3:6. And therefore, do with me what seems good to You; command my spirit to be taken, that I may be freed and return to the dust, for it is better for me to die than to live, for I heard deceitful reproaches, and there is deep sorrow within me! Command me to be freed from this burden into the eternal dwelling, and do not turn Your face away from me. 1–6. Under the weight of misfortunes: blindness, poverty, and reproaches from his wife—Tobit makes a fervent prayer. This prayer as a whole and in its individual details has a strictly biblical character and in many instances has considerable parallels in other biblical passages, especially in the various prayers of known sacred-historical persons contained in the Bible. Thus the humble confession by Tobit of the justice and mercy of all God’s deeds and ways (verse 2) and in thought and partly in wording resemble, e.g., the words of the psalmist Ps 24:10; the prophet Jeremiah (Jer 22:1); the prophet Daniel (Dan 4 and others). The belief that sometimes descendants are punished for the sins of their fathers (verse 3), as is well known, runs through the entire Old Testament, found expression in the Mosaic legislation (Exod 20:5; Num 14:18), was confirmed by various historical facts (e.g., for the sin of Ham his son Canaan was cursed, for the sin of David his son by Bathsheba died; the grave consequences of the sins of Solomon his son Rehoboam had to bear), and, although the extremes and abuses of this belief provoked prophetic condemnation and refutation (Jer 31:29; Ezek 18:1-4), it continued in the Jewish people down to the times of the New Testament, as is evident from the judgment of the apostles about the man born blind (John 9:2). In relation to the fates of Israel this belief had special significance (verse 4, cf. Deut 23:15), as this, e.g., was confessed, like Tobit (verses 4–5), by the prophet Daniel (Dan 9:4-13). Finally, Tobit’s request for death (verse 6) has a parallel for itself in the prayers of: Job (Job 7:15), the prophet Elijah (1 Kgs 19:4, cf. Commented Bible, vol. II) and others, although, of course, this request has only relative value and significance (cf. Jonah 4 ff.). It is self-evident, however, that these features of similarity of the Book of Tobit with other biblical books cannot speak in favor of the opinion (of Eichhorn and others), that in the Book of Tobit we have a free imitation or elaboration of the accounts of other biblical books.

Tobit 3:7. And on that very day it came to pass that Sarah, the daughter of Raguel, in Ecbatana of Media, also suffered reproaches from the maidservants of her father Tobit 3:8. because she had been given to seven husbands, and Asmodeus, the evil spirit, had slain them before she was married to them as a wife. They said to her: Did you not kill your husbands? Already seven you have had, and you have not been called by the name of any of them. Tobit 3:9. Why do they beat us for them? They are dead: go after them too, so that we never see your son or your daughter forever! Tobit 3:10. Hearing this, she was greatly grieved, so that she resolved to end her own life, but she thought: I am alone with my father; if I do this, it will be a shame to him, and I will bring down his old age with sorrow to the grave. Tobit 3:11. And she stood at the window and prayed, saying: Blessed are You, O Lord my God, and blessed is Your holy and glorious name forever: let all Your creatures bless You forever! Tobit 3:12. And now to You, O Lord, I turn my eyes and my face; Tobit 3:13. I ask, take me from this earth and do not let me hear reproach anymore! Tobit 3:14. You know, O Lord, that I am clean from all sin with a husband Tobit 3:15. and I have not defiled my name, nor the name of my father in the land of my captivity; I am the only child of my father, and he has no son, and no near brother, nor a son of my brother’s, to whom I might preserve myself as a wife: already seven have perished for me. For what reason should I live? But if it is not pleasing to You to kill me, then be merciful and look upon me, so that I may not hear reproach anymore! 7–15. Equally, the coincidence in time and content of the prayer of Tobit and the prayer of Sarah, daughter of Raguel (verses 7 ff.), presents nothing artificial or fabricated, nor does the general similarity in the fates of these persons: piety, suffering, undeserved reproaches and the like. “This similarity… is not so great that life could not present analogous cases. There is nothing impossible about the simultaneity of the prayers of Tobit and Sarah for deliverance from suffering or the sending of death” (Prof. Drozdov, p. 306). Instead of Ecbatana (verse 7 according to Greek, Slavonic, Russian) in the Vulgate Rages are named (in Rages, civitate Medorum), about which in the Vulgate it is noted that Rages are located on the mountain of Ecbatana (quae posita est in monte Ecbatanis). Sarah’s sevenfold marriage (verse 8) represents a rare but not impossible occurrence (Matt 22:25-32); although, as an extraordinary event, it served as a subject of reproach from Sarah’s servants, falsely accusing her of killing her husbands (verses 8–9). The true cause of the immediate death of each of the seven husbands of Sarah (every time before actual marital relations with her) was an evil spirit or demon Asmodeus (‘Ασμοδαίος τό πονηρόν δαιμόνιον), verse 8. The meaning of this name was attempted to be explained from an Aryan root, but such attempts are doubtful and purposeless, since the word Asmodeus is satisfactorily explained from the Hebrew-Aramaic root: shamad—to destroy, devastate, so that Asmodeus—destroyer, devastator, which fully corresponds to the destructive activity of Asmodeus according to the description in the Book of Tobit (Tob 3:8), and finds full analogy in the name of the evil spirit destroyer Abaddon, in Greek Apollyon, Rev 9:11. The fundamental moment in the conception of Asmodeus, according to this etymology, is harmfulness to people—a fundamental feature in the biblical conception of the evil spirit—Satan and demons. Not lacking, however, a certain degree of probability and a certain amount of significance is the attempt of some scholars (Benfey, Dillmann, Langin, Rim, Kogug, and others) to establish a connection between the name Asmodeus and one of the evil spirits or demons of the Avesta—aeshma-daeva, the demon of fleshly passion,—since it is precisely such a one that Asmodeus appears in the Book of Tobit (VI:14). (See in A. Glagolev, Old Testament Biblical Teaching on Angels. Kiev, 1900, pp. 690–695; in Prof. Drozdov, cited work, pp. 381–393.). Sarah performed her fervent prayer “by the window” (verse 11), Slavonic: at the small window, Greek: προς τη θυρίδι, “in a chamber,” είς το υπερώον (according to the Sinaiticus Codex of the LXX), i.e., in a mezzanine on the flat roof of a house, which room ordinarily served for rest, privacy, and prayer (Dan 6:10; Acts 20:8-9). Standing in prayer at an open window (Dan 6:10, Hebrew 11) in the direction of the holy land, Jerusalem and the temple (1 Kgs 8:44) was an ancient custom, established especially during the captivity, and authorized by the traditional law of Judaism (see Commented Bible, vol, II, p. 463). The content of Sarah’s prayer (verses 11–15), besides general biblical ideas, contains direct references to the individual features of Sarah’s life and suffering (verses 14–15), especially to her preservation of chastity (verse 14).

Tobit 3:16. And the prayer of both was heard before the glory of the great God, and Raphael was sent to heal both: Tobit 3:17. to remove the cataracts from the eyes of Tobit and to give Sarah, daughter of Raguel, as a wife to Tobias, son of Tobit, and to bind the evil spirit Asmodeus; for Tobias was destined to inherit her. And at that very moment Tobit returned into his house and Sarah descended from her chamber. 16–17. The prayers of both sufferers, Tobit and Sarah, were heard. In the accepted Greek text of the LXX and Slavonic in verse 16 it is erroneously read ενώπιον τής δόξης τού μεγάλου Ραφαήλ καί απεστάλη—“and the Lord heard the prayer of both, before the glory of the great Raphael, and was sent…”. But in codices 64, 243, 248, in the Complutensian and Aldine editions, as well as in the Sinaiticus manuscript, after μεγάλου stands Θεού, and the conjunction και stands before Ραφαήλ or before απεστάλη. The Russian synodal translation correctly conveys the thought of the authentic text. The name of the angel Raphael, as one of the highest seven angels standing before God (Tob 12:15), is found only in the Book of Tobit and later—in the so-called Book of Enoch (chs. IX:1; X:4; XX:3; XL:9) (see Das Buch Henoch, translated and explained by A. Dillmann and—“The Book of Enoch: A Historical-Critical Study, Russian translation and explanation of the apocryphal Book of Enoch” (Kazan, 1886) Prof. Prot. A.V. Smirnov). The pre-captivity biblical literature did not know the names of angels. Only in the Book of the prophet Daniel (chs. VIII, IX, X, XII) for the first time are mentioned two names of angels—Gabriel and Michael. As these two names, while being proper names, have, nevertheless, in their meaning, a predicative significance—expressing different aspects of the relationship of angels to God, the world and people (see in A. Glagolev. Old Testament Biblical Teaching on Angels, pp. 361–377), so also the name Raphael, derived from Hebrew “rapha,” “to heal, cure,” and “el,” “God,” indicates the mission for which Raphael was sent by God to earth (III:17; XII:14), namely, to healing (ίασασθαι) (verse 17) or the deliverance of Tobit from blindness, Sarah from the soul-sickness or suffering caused her by the demon. And in the Book of Enoch (ch. XL:9) Raphael is described as the one set over all diseases and all wounds of the children of men. But in the Book of Enoch the conception of the angel Raphael is confused with the later angelological views of Judaism, while in the Book of Tobit the pure biblical teaching on angels is preserved, with the addition of some details concerning their external appearance on earth (ch. V:4 ff.) and the position of Raphael in the heavenly hierarchy (XII:15). See in A. Glagolev. Old Testament Biblical Teaching on Angels, pp. 407–410, and in Prof. Drozdov, pp. 368–381.