Deported to Nineveh among the tribes of the north, Tobit of Naphtali keeps a fidelity that will cost him nearly everything. While his kinsmen bow to the golden calf Jeroboam set up at Dan, he alone carries his tithes and firstfruits up to Jerusalem, and in exile he refuses the food of the Gentiles. His piety turns dangerous under Sennacherib: he feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and buries the Israelites the king has cast out unburied, until he is denounced, stripped of his goods, and forced to flee, restored to his house only when the king falls to his own sons. Read and valued across the tradition, the book is received as Scripture by Roman Catholics and the Orthodox and set apart from the canon by the Reformers. Here at the threshold of the book stands the figure the whole story will vindicate: a righteous man whose almsgiving and care for the dead defy an empire, and who trusts the providence of God over His people in exile.