Tobit 11 – Raphael and Tobias decide to go ahead of Sarah and the rest so as to greet Tobit and put the “gall” from the fish on his eyes so he will be cured. They do and of course both Tobit and his wife are overjoyed to see their son. Tobias applies the gall and Tobit’s sight is restored. They praise God and go off to the gates of Nineveh to greet Sarah.

Tobit 12 – Tobit tells Tobias they need to reward Azariah [Raphael] for all his help. Tobias thinks half of…

Tobit 9 – Tobias sends Azariah (Raphael) to Gabael, the cousin of his father with whom he long ago left the silver. He also lives in Media. Tobias wants him to come to the wedding feast that is planned. Azariah goes to Gabael, presents him with the receipt [Tobit’s half] and tells him about the marriage of Tobias and Sarah. The seals to the sacks of silver are “still intact” (9:7). They load the silver on the camels and the next morning set off for the feast together. When Gabael sees…

Tobit 7 – They go to Raguel’s home and are well-received. Raguel learns that Tobias is son of his kinsman, Tobit. Raguel responds warmly to Tobias’ appeal to marry his daughter, and he tells the whole story about the seven husbands. They are given in marriage and Sarah’s mother goes to prepare the place where they will come together.

Tobit 8 – Tobias does as he was instructed and burns the fish’s organs on the incense. This drives the demon to the “remotest…

Tobit 5 – Tobias answers that he will go and try to get the silver his father left in Media some twenty years earlier, but he wonders how he will get the money since the man to whom it was given does not know him. Tobit says that he “set his signature to a note which I cut in two, so that each could keep half of it. I took one piece, and put the other with the silver” (5:3). CLEVER!

Tobias needs to get someone who knows how to get to Media; so he does. He finds the…

Tobit 3 – There follows a lovely ode on his unworthiness and desire for God’s forgiveness – here is some of it:

                                            You are just, O Lord,

                                            And just are all your works,

                                            All your ways are grace and truth,

                                            And you are the Judge of the…

Tobit is not in the Protestant Bible; it is part of what is called the “apocrypha.” My Jerusalem Bible introduction to the books says they were “only recognized by the Church after a certain hesitancy in the patristic period” but they have been “read and quoted from early days and appear in the official canonical lists in the West from the time of the Roman Synod of 382 and, in the East, from 682” (601). All three “belong to the same type of literature”; they all deal with…