Tobit 2:7-14: a reflection

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 good man. At personal risk, he buries the dead whom others left exposed, a real act of mercy for which he is mocked. And then, that very night, a strange misfortune blinds him. A righteous man, doing a righteous thing, ends up mocked and blind. His faithfulness did not exempt him from suffering, and the account does not pretend it should have.

But the passage also, honestly, shows Tobit's flaw. When his wife, working hard to support them in his blindness, is given a young goat as a bonus by her employers, Tobit does not trust her; he assumes she must have stolen it and demands she give it back. Give it back, he says; it is not right to eat what is stolen. And his wife rebukes him sharply: where now are your acts of charity and your righteous deeds? Even this good man fell into an ungenerous suspicion of the person closest to him, and needed to be called on it.

There are two honest notes here worth holding together. Faithfulness to God does not exempt us from suffering; good people suffer, as Tobit did, and it is not a sign that God has abandoned them. And even genuinely righteous people are not flawless; Tobit, for all his mercy to strangers, wounded his own wife with unfair suspicion. That should keep us both from despair when we suffer despite trying to do right, and from a self-righteousness that assumes our goodness makes us above reproach. Keep doing right, expect that it will not spare you all suffering, and stay humble enough to be corrected when, like Tobit, you wrong someone close to you.

Lord, Tobit was righteous and still suffered, and still wounded his wife with unfair suspicion. Keep me from despair when suffering comes despite my trying to do right, and from the self-righteousness that assumes my goodness puts me above reproach. Help me keep doing right without expecting it to spare me all trouble, and stay humble enough to be corrected when I wrong someone close to me.