Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
← →
⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Historic voices 2 ▾
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2× 8, 12 City of God 2× 12, 19
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Tobit 12 about?

Wishing to reward their guide, Tobit and Tobias resolve to give Azarias half of all they have brought back. Raphael then discloses who he is: one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints before the glory of God, sent to test and to heal Tobit and Sarah. He urges them to bless God, to prefer prayer with fasting and almsgiving over hoarded wealth, for charity delivers from death and purges sin, then ascends before their eyes. Father and son fall on their faces in awe, learning that their acts of mercy had been carried up to God all along, the story's clearest word on why the faithful give.

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 12
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 12

Tobit Chapter 12
12
← Chapter 11 Chapter 13 →
What is Tobit 12 about?

Wishing to reward their guide, Tobit and Tobias resolve to give Azarias half of all they have brought back. Raphael then discloses who he is: one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints before the glory of God, sent to test and to heal Tobit and Sarah. He urges them to bless God, to prefer prayer with fasting and almsgiving over hoarded wealth, for charity delivers from death and purges sin, then ascends before their eyes. Father and son fall on their faces in awe, learning that their acts of mercy had been carried up to God all along, the story's clearest word on why the faithful give.