Tobit’s prayer to die

3 Deeply upset in my heart, I sighed and wept and began to pray with sighs:

Sarah’s plight and her prayer to die

⁷ On the same day in Ecbatana of Media, Sarah, Raguel’s daughter, also heard insults from one of her father’s female servants.

⁸ Sarah had been given in marriage to seven husbands; and Asmodeus, an evil demon, killed them before they could lie with her as newlyweds do.^[b] And so the female servant said to her, “You are the one who keeps killing your husbands! See, you have already been given to seven husbands, and you haven’t carried the name of any of them. ⁹ Are you beating us because they have all died? Go with them, and may we never see a son or daughter of yours!”

¹⁰ On that day Sarah was deeply upset in her heart and wept. She went upstairs to a room in her father’s house, and planned to hang herself. But she had second thoughts and said, “They will never insult my father by saying to him, ‘You had but one dearly loved daughter, and she hanged herself because of her troubles.’ If I did this, I would bring my old father down to the grave in sorrow. It is better for me not to hang myself, but to beg of the Lord to let me die so that I no longer hear insults during my lifetime.”

¹¹ At that moment, she stretched her hands out toward the window and prayed:

Raphael helps Tobit and Sarah

¹⁶ At that very moment, the prayers of both Sarah and Tobit were heard in God’s glorious presence. ¹⁷ Raphael was sent to heal the two of them: Tobit, by removing the white spots from his eyes to see God’s light with his eyes again, and Sarah, Raguel’s daughter, by giving her as a wife to Tobias, Tobit’s son, and by ridding her of the evil demon. It was Tobias’ right to inherit her before all the others who wished to take her. At that very moment Tobit returned from the courtyard back into his house, and Sarah, Raguel’s daughter, also came down from the upstairs room.

Psalm 25^[a]

Of David.

A question about the resurrection

¹⁸ Sadducees, who deny that there is a resurrection, came to Jesus and asked, ¹⁹ “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a widow but no children, the brother must marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.^{[a] 20} Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman; when he died, he left no children. ²¹ The second married her and died without leaving any children. The third did the same. ²² None of the seven left any children. Finally, the woman died. ²³ At the resurrection, when they all rise up, whose wife will she be? All seven were married to her.”

²⁴ Jesus said to them, “Isn’t this the reason you are wrong, because you don’t know either the scriptures or God’s power? ²⁵ When people rise from the dead, they won’t marry nor will they be given in marriage. Instead, they will be like God’s angels. ²⁶ As for the resurrection from the dead, haven’t you read in the scroll from Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God said to Moses, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?^{[b] 27} He isn’t the God of the dead but of the living. You are seriously mistaken.”