Tobit’s Youth and Virtuous Life

³ I, Tobit, walked in the ways of truth and righteousness all the days of my life. I performed many acts of charity for my kindred and my people who had gone with me in exile to Nineveh in the land of the Assyrians.

2 Then during the reign of Esar-haddon^[a] I returned home, and my wife Anna and my son Tobias were restored to me. At our festival of Pentecost, which is the sacred festival of weeks, a good dinner was prepared for me and I reclined to eat. ² When the table was set for me and an abundance of food placed before me, I said to my son Tobias, “Go, my child, and bring whatever poor person you may find of our people among the exiles in Nineveh, who is wholeheartedly mindful of God,^[b] and he shall eat together with me. I will wait for you, until you come back.” ³ So Tobias went to look for some poor person of our people. When he had returned he said, “Father!” And I replied, “Here I am, my child.” Then he went on to say, “Look, father, one of our own people has been murdered and thrown into the market place, and now he lies there strangled.” ⁴ Then I sprang up, left the dinner before even tasting it, and removed the body^[c] from the square^[d] and laid it^[e] in one of the rooms until sunset when I might bury it.^{[f] 5} When I returned, I washed myself and ate my food in sorrow. ⁶ Then I remembered the prophecy of Amos, how he said against Bethel,^[g]

And I wept.

Tobit Becomes Blind

⁷ When the sun had set, I went and dug a grave and buried him. ⁸ And my neighbors laughed and said, “Is he still not afraid? He has already been hunted down to be put to death for doing this, and he ran away; yet here he is again burying the dead!”