Tobit 3:7-16

Common English Bible

Sarah’s plight and her prayer to die

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

⁸Sarah had been given in marriage to seven husbands; and Asmodeus, an evil demon, killed them before they could lie with her as newlyweds do.^[a] 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. ⁹Are you beating us because they have all died? Go with them, and may we never see a son or daughter of yours!”

¹⁰On 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.”

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

“You are blessed, merciful God, and your name is blessed forever! May all your works forever praise you! ¹²And now, Lord, I lift my face and my eyes toward you. ¹³Speak the word, and set me free from the earth so that I don’t have to hear insults anymore. ¹⁴You know, Master, that I’m pure from any uncleanness from relations with a man. ¹⁵You know that I haven’t tarnished my name or my father’s name in this country where we are captives. I’m my father’s only child. He has no other child to be his heir, nor does he have a brother or near relative for whom I can keep myself as a wife. Seven have died on me already, so why should I go on living? And if you don’t like the idea of killing me, take notice, at least, of how they insult me.”