Tobit 1:3-9

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

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 nation who had gone with me in exile to Nineveh in the land of the Assyrians.^{(A) 4} When I was in my own country, in the land of Israel, while I was still a young man, the whole tribe of my ancestor Naphtali deserted the house of David and Jerusalem. This city had been chosen from among all the tribes of Israel, where all the tribes of Israel should offer sacrifice and where the temple, the dwelling of God, had been consecrated and established for all generations forever.^(B)

⁵ All my kindred and my ancestral house of Naphtali sacrificed upon all the mountains of Galilee to the calf that King Jeroboam of Israel had erected in Dan and on all the mountains of Galilee.^{(C) 6} But I alone went often to Jerusalem for the festivals, as it is prescribed for all Israel by an everlasting decree. I would hurry off to Jerusalem with the first fruits of the crops and the firstlings of the flock, the tithes of the cattle, and the first shearings of the sheep.^{(D) 7} I would give these to the priests, the sons of Aaron, at the altar, likewise the tenth of the grain, wine, olive oil, pomegranates, figs, and the rest of the fruits to the sons of Levi who ministered at Jerusalem. Also every six years I would save up a second tenth in money and go and distribute it each year in Jerusalem,^{(E) 8} giving it to the orphans and widows and to the converts who had attached themselves to the Israelites. In the third year I would bring it and give it to them, and we would eat it according to the ordinance decreed concerning it in the law of Moses and according to the instructions of Deborah, the mother of my father Tobiel,^[a] for my father had died and left me an orphan.^{(F) 9} When I became a man I married a woman,^[b] a member of our own family, and by her I became the father of a son whom I named Tobias.^(G)