Tobit 3
1Then I being grieved did weep, and in my sorrow prayed, saying,
2O Lord, you are just, and all your works and all your ways are mercy and truth, and you judge truly and justly for ever.
3Remember me, and look on me, punish me not for my sins and ignorances, and the sins of my fathers, who have sinned before you:
4For they obeyed not your commandments: therefore you have delivered us for a spoil, and to captivity, and to death, and for a proverb of reproach to all the nations among whom we are dispersed.
5And now your judgments are many and true: deal with me according to my sins and my fathers': because we have not kept your commandments, neither have walked in truth before you.
6Now therefore deal with me as seems best to you, and command my spirit to be taken from me, that I may be dissolved, and become earth: for it is profitable for me to die rather than to live, because I have heard false reproaches, and have much sorrow: command therefore that I may now be delivered out of this distress, and go into the everlasting place: turn not your face away from me.
7It came to pass the same day, that in Ecbatane a city of Media Sara the daughter of Raguel was also reproached by her father's maids;
8Because that she had been married to seven husbands, whom Asmodeus the evil spirit had killed, before they had lain with her. Do you not know, said they, that you have strangled your husbands? you have had already seven husbands, neither was you named after any of them.
9Therefore do you beat us for them? if they be dead, go your ways after them, let us never see of you either son or daughter.
10When she heard these things, she was very sorrowful, so that she thought to have strangled herself; and she said, I am the only daughter of my father, and if I do this, it shall be a reproach to him, and I shall bring his old age with sorrow to the grave.
11Then she prayed toward the window, and said, Blessed are you, O Lord my God, and your holy and glorious name is blessed and honorable for ever: let all your works praise you for ever.
12And now, O Lord, I set I mine eyes and my face toward you,
13And say, Take me out of the earth, that I may hear no more the reproach.
14You know, Lord, that I am pure from all sin with man,
15And that I never polluted my name, nor the name of my father, in the land of my captivity: I am the only daughter of my father, neither has he any child to be his heir, neither any near kinsman, nor any son of his alive, to whom I may keep myself for a wife: my seven husbands are already dead; and why should I live? but if it please not you that I should die, command some regard to be had of me, and pity taken of me, that I hear no more reproach.
16So the prayers of them both were heard before the majesty of the great God.
17And Raphael was sent to heal them both, that is, to scale away the whiteness of Tobit's eyes, and to give Sara the daughter of Raguel for a wife to Tobias the son of Tobit; and to bind Asmodeus the evil spirit; because she belonged to Tobias by right of inheritance. The selfsame time came Tobit home, and entered into his house, and Sara the daughter of Raguel came down from her upper chamber.
Commentaries for Tobit 3:0