From: Tobit 3:1-11a, 16-17a
Tobit's Prayer in Nineveh
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[1] Then in my grief I wept, and I prayed in anguish, saying, [2] "Righteous are thou, O Lord; all thy deeds and all thy ways are mercy and truth, and thou dost render true and righteous judgment for ever. [3] Remember me and look favorably upon me; do not punish me for my sins and for my unwitting offenses and those which my fathers committed before thee. [4] For they disobeyed thy commandments, and thou gavest us over to plunder, captivity, and death; thou madest us a byword of reproach in all the nations among which we have been dispersed. [5] And now thy many judgments are true in exacting penalty from me for my sins and those of my fathers, because we did not keep thy commandments. For we did not walk in truth before thee. [6] And now deal with me according to thy pleasure; command my spirit to be taken up, that I may depart and become dust. For it is better for me to die than to live, because I have heard false reproaches, and great is the sorrow within me. Command that I now be released from my distress to go to the eternal abode; do not turn thy face away from me."
Sarah's Misfortune
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[7] On the same day, at Ecbatana in Media, it also happened that Sarah, the daughter of Raguel, was reproached by her father's maids, [8] because she had been given to seven husbands, and the evil demon Asmodeus had slain each of them before he had been with her as his wife. So the rnaids said to her, "Do you not know that you strangle your husbands? You already have had seven and have had no benefit from any of them. [9] Why do you beat us? If they are dead, go with them! May we never see a son or daughter of yours!"
[10] When she heard these things she was deeply grieved, even to the thought of hanging herself. But she said, "I am the only child of my father, if I do this, it will be a disgrace to him, and I shall bring his old age down in sorrow to the grave.
Sarah's Prayer in Media
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[11a] So she prayed by her window and said, "Blessed art thou, Lord my God, and blessed is thy holy and honored name forever.
The Prayers of Tobit and Sarah are Heard
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[16] The prayer of both was heard in the presence of the glory of the great God. [17a] And Raphael was sent to heal the two of them: to scale away the white films of Tobit's eyes; to give Sarah the daughter of Raguel in marriage to Tobias the son of Tobit, and to bind Asmodeus the evil demon.
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Commentary:
3:1-6. Tobit does not reply to his wife's criticism; instead he entreats God in language reminiscent of the Psalms--but whereas the Psalms always pray for health and salvation, Tobit ends up praying for death. In this he is like Job (cf. Job 3:20-23), although Tobit acknowledges that God is right to punish him fnr his sins and those of his fathers, for which he feels responsible.
From the Greek text (where the RSV follows) one cannot deduce that Tobit envisages eternal life as a place of repose and joy in the presence of God; he sees it a place where the dead will dwell for all eternity. But the Latin version of the Vulgate implies that Tobit looks forward to being with the Lord. In any event, Tobit puts his trust in God, which means he can desire death, in the same sort of way that "the Christian can experience a desire for death like St Paul's: 'My desire is to depart and be with Christ' (Phil 1:23). He can transform his own death into an act of obedience and love towards the Father, after the example of Christ" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1011).
3:7-10. The narrator now takes over again (cf. 1:1-2), to introduce another Jewish family in exile which also finds itself in great difficulty. Tobit's and Sarah's are two stories in parallel butt pointing out that their prayers are spoken on the same day, the writer makes it clear that they meet in God.
Sarah's goodness can be seen from the fact that she is obedient to her father and is worried on his account (v. 10). The demon's name, Asmodeus (v. 8), is reminiscent of "Aeshma Deva", one of the seven evil spirits the Persians believed in, but it may also come from a Hebrew word (smd) which means "to destroy, to annihilate". Asmodeus is the demon who destroys Sarah's husbands.
The text does not say that the demon was infatuated with Sarah, as some have interpreted; what he seems to want is to drive her to despair, as happened in the case of Job. In fact Sarah is on the edge of committing the grave sin of suicide, but her love for her father holds her back. To avoid tainting Sarah with the thought of suicide, the Vulgate says that "she went into an upper chamber of her house: and for three days and three nights did neither eat nor drink: but continuing in prayer with tears besought God, that he would deliver her from this reproach."
Suicide very rarely appears in the Bible (cf. 2 Sam 17:23), and Scripture makes no moral judgment on it; but from the fifth commandment (cf. Ex 20:15; Deut 5:17) one can deduce that it is condemned: "Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations. Suicide is contrary to love for the living God" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2281).
3:11-15. The gesture of praying at the window with arms outstretched probably means that she was holding them towards Jerusalem, as any good Jew should do when praying (cf. Dan 6:10). Sarah's prayer begins with praise of God and then she immediately goes on to pray for death (v. 10). She explains her predicament to God: she is innocent (vv. 14-15) and yet she is being condemned to have no heirs--and, according to Jewish thinking at the time, life holds no meaning for someone in that situation; even her maidservants jeer at her. But Sarah leaves it up to God to sort things out; to her, death seems the only solution (v. 15). God can indeed come to our aid in unexpected ways, for "Providence is the care God provides for everything that exists. [...] Moreover, divine providence has countless ways of working: so many, that they cannot be accounted for in words or comprehended by the mind. It cannot be denied that all the calamities that befall men work for the salvation those who endure them giving thanks and thus win great reward for themselves. For God, according to his will that informs all things, desires that all be saved and come to be members his kingdom (cf. 1 Tim 2:4): he has not created us in order to punish us, but rather, being good, he wants us partake of his goodness" (St John Damascene, Expositio Fidei Orthodoxae, 2, 29).
3:16-17. Two things are stressed: God listens to prayers when they come from the heart; and he responds with mercy, wisdom and providence in ways that exceed man's expectations. Now, by one and the same action (the despatch of the angel Raphael) he comes to the rescue of Sarah and Tobit. The angel's name, meaning "God has cured" or "God's medicine", indicates the remedy God is going to provide: in a way it reveals the final outcome of the story.
The Resurrection of the Dead
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[18] And Sadducees came to Him (Jesus), who say that there is no resurrection; and they asked Him a question, saying [19] "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the wife, and raise up children for his brother. [20] There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no children; [21] and the second took her, and died, leaving no children; and the third likewise; [22] and the seven left no children. Last of all the woman also died. [23] In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife."
[24] Jesus said to them, "Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? [25] For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in Heaven. [26] And as for being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, `I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? [27] He is not God of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong."
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Commentary:
18-27. Before answering the difficulty proposed by the Sadducees, Jesus wants to identify the source of the problem--man's tendency to confine the greatness of God inside a human framework through excessive reliance on reason, not giving due weight to divine Revelation and the power of God. A person can have difficulty with the truths of faith; this is not surprising, for these truths are above human reason. But it is ridiculous to try to find contradictions in the revealed word of God; this only leads away from any solution of difficulty and may make it impossible to find one's way back to God. We need to approach Sacred Scripture, and, in general, the things of God, with the humility which faith demands. In the passage about the burning bush, which Jesus quotes to the Sadducees, God says this to Moses: "Put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground" (Exodus 3:5).