Tobit 7

¹ As they entered Ecbatana, Tobias said, ‘Brother Azarias, take me at once I to our brother Raguel’s’. And he showed him the way to the house of Raguel, whom they found sitting beside his courtyard door. They greeted him first, and he replied, ‘Welcome and greetings, brothers’. And he took them into his house.

² He said to his wife Edna, ‘How like my brother Tobit this young man is!’

³ Edna asked them where they came from; they said, ‘We are sons of Naphtali exiled in Nineveh’.

⁴ ‘Do you know our brother Tobit?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How is he?’

⁵ ‘He is still alive and he is well.’ And Tobias added, ‘He is my father’.

⁶ Raguel leapt to his feet and kissed him and wept.

⁷ Then finding words, he said, ‘Blessings on you, child! You are the son of a noble father. How sad it is that someone so virtuous and full of good deeds should have gone blind!’ He fell on the neck of his kinsman Tobias and wept.

⁸ And his wife Edna wept for him, and so did his daughter Sarah.

⁹ Raguel killed a sheep from the flock, and they gave them a warmhearted welcome. They washed and bathed and sat down to table. Then Tobias said to Raphael, ‘Brother Azarias, will you ask Raguel to give me my sister Sarah?’

¹⁰ Raguel overheard the words, and said to the young man, ‘Eat and drink, and make the most of your evening; no one else has the right to take my daughter Sarah – no one but you, my brother. In any case I, for my own part, am not at liberty to give her to anyone else, since you are her next of kin. However, my boy, I must be frank with you:

¹¹ I have tried to find a husband for her seven times among our kinsmen, and all of them have died the first evening, on going to her room. But for the present, my boy, eat and drink; the Lord will grant you his grace and peace.’ Tobias spoke out, ‘I will not hear of eating and drinking till you have come to a decision about me’. Raguel answered, ‘Very well. Since, as prescribed by the Book of Moses, she is given to you, heaven itself decrees she shall be yours. I therefore entrust your sister to you. From now you are her brother and she is your sister. She is given to you from today for ever. The Lord of heaven favour you tonight, my child, and grant you his grace and peace.’

¹² Raguel called for his daughter Sarah, took her by the hand and gave her to Tobias with these words, ‘I entrust her to you; the law and the ruling recorded in the Book of Moses assign her to you as your wife. Take her; take her home to your father’s house with a good conscience. The God of heaven grant you a good journey in peace.’

¹³ Then he turned to her mother and asked her to fetch him writing paper. He drew up the marriage contract, how he gave his daughter as bride to Tobias according to the ordinance in the Law of Moses.

¹⁴ After this they began to eat and drink.

¹⁵ Raguel called his wife Edna and said, ‘My sister, prepare the second room and take her there’.

¹⁶ She went and made the bed in this room as he had ordered, and took her daughter to it. She wept over her, then wiped away her tears and said, ‘Courage, daughter! May the Lord of heaven turn your grief to joy! Courage, daughter!’ And she went out.