Tobit 2
2
A Family Celebration
1 #
Ex 23.16
When I returned home I was reunited with my wife Anna and my son Tobias. At the Harvest Festival, which is also called the Festival of Weeks, I sat down to a delicious meal. 2When I saw how much food there was on the table, I said to Tobias, “My son, go out and find some fellow-Jew who is living in poverty here in exile, someone who takes God's commands seriously. Bring him back with you, so that he can share this festival meal with us. I won't start eating until you come back.”
A Murder in Nineveh
3So Tobias went out to look for such a person. But he quickly returned, shouting, “Father! Father!”
“Yes, what is it?” I asked.
“One of our people has just been murdered! Someone strangled him and threw his body into the market-place.”
4I jumped up and left the table without even touching my food. I removed the body from the street and carried it to a little shed, where I left it until sunset, when I could bury it. 5#Num 19.11–13Then I returned home and washed, so as to purify myself. In deep sorrow I ate my dinner. 6#Amos 8.10I was reminded of what the prophet Amos had said to the people of Bethel:
“Your festivals will be turned into funerals,
and your glad songs will become cries of grief.”
I began to weep.
7After sunset I went out, dug a grave, and buried the man. 8My neighbours thought I was mad. “Haven't you learnt anything?” they asked. “You have already been in danger once for burying the dead, and you would have been killed if you had not run away. But here you are doing the same thing all over again.”
Tobit Is Blinded
9That night I washed, so as to purify myself, and went out into my courtyard to sleep by the wall. It was a hot night, and I did not pull the cover up over my head. 10Sparrows were on the wall right above me, but I did not know it. Their warm droppings fell into my eyes, causing a white film to form on them. I went to one doctor after another, but the more they treated me with their medicines, the worse my eyes became, until finally I was completely blind.
For four years I could see nothing. My relatives were deeply concerned about my condition, and Ahikar supported me for two years before he went to the land of Elam.
A Family Quarrel
11After Ahikar left, my wife Anna had to go to work, so she took up weaving, like many other women. 12The people she worked for would pay her when she delivered the cloth. One spring day, she cut a finished piece of cloth from the loom and took it to the people who had ordered it. They paid her the full price and also gave her a goat.
13When Anna came home with the goat, it began to bleat. I called out, “Where did that goat come from? You stole it, didn't you? Take it straight back to its owners. It's not right to eat stolen food!”
14“No!” she replied. “It was given to me as a gift in addition to what I got for the cloth.” But I didn't believe her, and I blushed for shame for what she had done. I ordered her to return the goat to its owners, but she had the last word. “Now I see what you are really like!” she shouted. “Where is all that concern of yours for others? What about all those good deeds you used to do?”
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Good News Bible with Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha. Scripture taken from the Good News Bible (r) (Today's English Version Second Edition, UK/British Edition). Copyright © 1992 British & Foreign Bible Society. Used by permission.
Tobit 2
2
1 In truth, after this, when there was a feast day of the Lord, and a good dinner had been prepared in the house of Tobit,
2 he said to his son: "Go, and bring some others who fear God from our tribe to feast with us."
3 And after he had gone, returning, he reported to him that one of the sons of Israel, with his throat cut, was lying in the street. And immediately, he leapt from his place reclining at table, left behind his dinner, and went forth with fasting to the body.
4 And taking it up, he carried it in secret to his house, so that, after the sun had set, he might bury him cautiously.
5 And after he had hidden the body, he chewed his bread with mourning and fear,
6 remembering the word that the Lord spoke through the prophet Amos: "Your feast days shall be turned into lamentation and mourning."
7 Truly, when the sun had set, he went out, and he buried him.
8 Yet all his neighbors argued with him, saying: "Now, an order was given to execute you because of this matter, and you barely escaped a death sentence, and again you are burying the dead?"
9 But Tobit, fearing God more than the king, stole away the bodies of the slain and concealed them in his house, and in the middle of the night, he buried them.
10 But it happened one day, being tired from burying the dead, he came into his house, and he threw himself down next to the wall, and he slept.
11 And, as he was sleeping, warm droppings from a swallow's nest fell upon his eyes, and he was made blind.
12 And so the Lord permitted this trial to befall him, in order that an example might be given to posterity of his patience, which is even like that of holy Job.
13 For, even from his infancy, he had always feared God and kept his commandments, so he was not discouraged before God because of the scourge of blindness that had befallen him.
14 But he remained immoveable in the fear of God, giving thanks to God all the days of his life.
15 For just as kings have mocked blessed Job, so also his relatives and acquaintances ridiculed his life, saying:
16 "Where is your hope, on behalf of which you gave alms and buried the dead?"
17 In truth, Tobit corrected them, saying: "Do not speak in this way,
18 for we are the sons of the holy ones, and we look forward to that life which God will give to those who never change in their faith before him."
19 In truth, his wife Anna went out to weaving work daily, and she brought back the provisions that she was able to obtain by the labor of her hands.
20 Whereupon it happened that, having received a young goat, she brought it home.
21 When her husband heard the sound of its bleating, he said, "Look, so that it might not be stolen, return it to its owners, for it is not lawful for us either to eat, or to touch, anything stolen."
22 At this, his wife, being angry, answered, "Clearly, your hope has become vanity, and the manner of your almsgiving has become apparent."
23 And with these and other similar such words, she reproached him.
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