Tobit’s Prayer

3 Then with much grief and anguish of heart I wept, and with groaning I began to pray:

Sarah Falsely Accused

⁷ On the same day, at Ecbatana in Media, it also happened that Sarah, the daughter of Raguel, was reproached by one of her father’s female slaves.^{(E) 8} For she had been married to seven husbands, and the wicked demon Asmodeus had killed each of them before they had been with her as is customary for wives. So the female slave said to her, “You are the one who kills^[b] your husbands! See, you have already been married to seven husbands and have not borne the name of^[c] a single one of them.^{(F) 9} Why do you beat us? Because your husbands are dead? Go with them! May we never see a son or daughter of yours!”

Sarah’s Prayer for Death

¹⁰ Overcome with emotion at that time, she wept and went up to her father’s upper room, intending to hang herself. But she thought it over and said, “Let no one ever reproach my father, saying to him, ‘You had only one beloved daughter, and she hanged herself out of distress!’^[d] I would bring my father in his old age down in sorrow to Hades. It is better for me not to hang myself but to beg the Lord that I may die, so that I will not have to listen to these reproaches for the rest of my life.”^{(G) 11} At that same time, with hands outstretched toward the window, she prayed and said,

The Question about the Resurrection

¹⁸ Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, saying, ¹⁹ “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, the man^[a] shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.^{(A) 20} There were seven brothers; the first married and, when he died, left no children, ²¹ and the second married the widow^[b] and died, leaving no children, and the third likewise; ²² none of the seven left children. Last of all the woman herself died. ²³ In the resurrection, when they rise,^[c] whose wife will she be? For all seven had married her.”

²⁴ Jesus said to them, “Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? ²⁵ For when people rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven.^{(B) 26} And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?^{(C) 27} He is God not of the dead but of the living; you are quite wrong.”