Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Tobit 11 about?

Nearing Nineveh, Raphael tells Tobias to keep the fish's gall ready and to anoint his father's eyes with it. Anna, watching the road as she has each day, sees them coming and runs to embrace her son, and Tobias applies the gall, peels the white films from Tobit's eyes, and restores his sight. The old man weeps for joy, blesses God before all, and goes out to meet his new daughter-in-law at the gate. Blindness lifted and the family made whole, the chapter delivers the healing the angel was sent to accomplish, the plainest sign yet of God's care over His own.

Historical backdrop

The tale is set among the exiles of the northern tribes, carried off to Nineveh when Assyria swallowed the kingdom of Israel and its ten tribes vanished into the empire. Nineveh sat astride the Tigris as the greatest city of the age, and the roads of Assyria ran east to Media, to Ecbatana beneath the Zagros and to Rages where a man might leave silver in trust against hard years. This is the world of the first great deportation, the dispersion that scattered Israel among the nations and taught it to be faithful far from the temple.

The Church Fathers on Tobit 11
Deuterocanon (Catholic & Orthodox) · Accepted as canonical Scripture by the Catholic and Orthodox traditions and included in the original 1611 KJV (between the Old and New Testaments). Not in the Protestant 66-book canon. Read with the same care you bring to other Scripture, conscious that Protestants and Catholics weigh its authority differently.

Tobit 11

Tobit Chapter 11
11
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What is Tobit 11 about?

Nearing Nineveh, Raphael tells Tobias to keep the fish's gall ready and to anoint his father's eyes with it. Anna, watching the road as she has each day, sees them coming and runs to embrace her son, and Tobias applies the gall, peels the white films from Tobit's eyes, and restores his sight. The old man weeps for joy, blesses God before all, and goes out to meet his new daughter-in-law at the gate. Blindness lifted and the family made whole, the chapter delivers the healing the angel was sent to accomplish, the plainest sign yet of God's care over His own.