Scripture Daily

Context No. 336 of 4322 · Tobit

Context · Reflection

Tobit 2:7-14: in context

7So I wept: and when the sun had set, I went and dug a grave, and buried him. 8My neighbors mocked me, and said, “He is no longer afraid to be put to death for this matter; and yet he fled away. Behold, he buries the dead again.” 9The same night I returned from burying him, and slept by the wall of my courtyard, being polluted; and my face was uncovered. 10I didn’t know that there were sparrows in the wall. My eyes were open and the sparrows dropped warm dung into my eyes, and white films came over my eyes. I went to the physicians, and they didn’t help me; but Achiacharus nourished me, until I went into Elymais. 11My wife Anna wove cloth in the women’s chambers, 12and sent the work back to the owners. They on their part paid her wages, and also gave her a kid. 13But when it came to my house, it began to cry, and I said to her, “Where did this kid come from? Is it stolen? Give it back to the owners; for it is not lawful to eat anything that is stolen.” 14But she said, “It has been given to me for a gift more than the wages.” I didn’t believe her, and I asked her to return it to the owners; and I was ashamed of her. But she answered and said to me, “Where are your alms and your righteous deeds? Behold, you and all your works are known.”

Tobit is a genuinely devout man. Living as an exile in Nineveh, he risks his life to bury the bodies of his people left in the street, defying the king's orders because the law of God requires burying the dead. This passage opens right after one such burial. Ritually unclean from handling a corpse, he sleeps outside against his courtyard wall, and in a detail almost absurd in its smallness, sparrow droppings fall into his open eyes and blind him. A lifetime of careful righteousness, and he is undone by birds. The physicians cannot help, and he is left helpless and dependent.

Then comes a scene that is painfully human. His wife Anna is now supporting the household by weaving, and her employers pay her and add a young goat as a bonus. Tobit hears it bleating and immediately suspects the worst: it must be stolen, give it back, it is not lawful to eat anything stolen. He would rather accuse his faithful wife of theft than accept a gift. And Anna's reply cuts straight through him: where are your acts of charity now, she says, where are all your righteous deeds? Look at what you are really like. His scrupulous righteousness, under the pressure of blindness and helplessness, has curdled into suspicion and the need to be right, aimed at the very person carrying him. The man so careful about the law cannot see the gift, or his wife's faithfulness, right in front of his blind eyes.

It is an honest portrait of how suffering can sour even real devotion. When I lose control, when I am the one being carried, do my principles harden into suspicion and a need to be right, so that I end up wounding the people supporting me while congratulating myself on my standards?

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