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Tobit 3
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Chapter 3
III.
SARAH
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Then, sad at heart, I sighed and wept, and began this prayer of lamentation:
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‘You are just, O Lord, and just are all your works. All your ways are grace and truth, and you are the Judge of the world.
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‘Therefore, Lord, remember me, look on me. Do not punish me for my sins or for my heedless faults or for those of my fathers. ‘For we have sinned against you
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and broken your commandments; and you have given us over to be plundered, to captivity and death, to be the talk, the laughing-stock and scorn of all the nations among whom you have dispersed us.
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‘Whereas all your decrees are true when you deal with me as my faults deserve, and those of my fathers, since we have neither kept your commandments nor walked in truth before you;
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so now, do with me as you will; be pleased to take my life from me; I desire to be delivered from earth and to become earth again. For death is better for me than life. I have been reviled without a cause and I am distressed beyond measure. ‘Lord, I wait for the sentence you will give to deliver me from this affliction. Let me go away to my everlasting home; do not turn your face from me, O Lord. For it is better to die than still to live in the face of trouble that knows no pity; I am weary of hearing myself traduced.’
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It chanced on the same day that Sarah the daughter of Ragnel, who lived in Media at Ecbatana, also heard insults from one of her father’s maids.
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You must know that she had been given in marriage seven times, and that Asmodeus, that worst of demons, had killed her bridegrooms one after another before ever they had slept with her as man with wife. The servant-girl said, ‘Yes, you kill your bridegrooms yourself. That makes seven already to whom you have been given, and you have not once been in luck yet.
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Just because your bridegrooms have died, that is no reason for punishing us. Go and join them, and may we be spared the sight of any child of yours!’
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That day, she grieved, she sobbed, and went up to her father’s room intending to hang herself. But then she thought, ‘Suppose they blamed my father! They will say, “You had an only daughter whom you loved, and now she has hanged herself for grief”. I cannot cause my father a sorrow which would bring down his old age to the dwelling of the dead. I should do better not to hang myself, but to beg the Lord to let me die and not live to hear any more insults.’
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And at this, by the window with outstretched arms she said this prayer: ‘You are blessed, O God of mercy! May your name be blessed for ever, and may all things you have made bless you everlastingly.
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<14 ‘And now, I lift up my face and to you I turn my eyes.
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<15 Let your word deliver me from earth; I can hear myself traduced no longer.
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<16 Lord; you know that I have remained pure; no man has touched me;
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<17 I have not dishonoured your name or my father’s name in this land of exile; ‘I am my father’s only daughter, he has no other child as heir; he has no brother at his side, nor has he any kinsman left for whom I ought to keep myself. ‘Already I have lost seven husbands; why should I live any longer? If it does not please you to take my life, then look on me with pity; I can hear myself traduced no longer.’
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<24 This time the prayer of each of them found favour before the glory of God,
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<25 and Raphael was sent to bring remedy to them both. He was to take the white spots from the eyes of Tobit, so that he might see God’s light with his own eyes; and he was to give Sarah, the daughter of Raguel, as bride to Tobias son of Tobit, and to rid her of Asmodeus, that worst of demons. For it was to Tobias before all other suitors that she belonged by right. Tobit was coming back from the courtyard into the house at the same moment as Sarah, the daughter of Raguel, was coming down from the upper room.
Chapters of Tobit
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
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