Hypertext Bible

World English Bible: Tobias

English Bible TranslationsModern Bible TranslationsNew Testament

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

This is the opening chapters of the **Book of Tobit**, a deuterocanonical Jewish narrative text (accepted as scripture by Catholic and Orthodox Christians, treated as apocrypha by Protestants and Jews), likely composed between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. The story follows Tobit, a devout Israelite exile in Assyrian Nineveh, who loses his wealth and sight after practicing forbidden burial of executed Jews, and Sarah, a young woman in Media whose seven successive husbands have been killed by the demon Asmodeus before each marriage is consummated. Both characters independently pray for death in their suffering, and the angel Raphael is dispatched by God to heal Tobit's blindness and arrange the marriage of his son Tobias to Sarah. A central thread is Tobit's instruction to Tobias before a journey to recover a debt — a lengthy ethical sermon emphasizing almsgiving, endogamous marriage within one's tribe, honoring parents, and treating laborers fairly. The text is distinctive for its domestic, family-centered piety: it frames Jewish faithfulness not through grand national events but through everyday charity, proper burial of the dead, and marrying within one's people, presenting these as the practical substance of covenant loyalty. It also stands out for its vivid demonology (Asmodeus) and its depiction of angelic intervention as the mechanism by which God answers the prayers of suffering but righteous individuals.

World English Bible: Tobias

Related pages View as graph →