Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Historic voices 1 ▾
Catechism of the Catholic Church 3× 3-11, 15
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Tobit 4 about?

Believing his death is near, Tobit calls Tobias to remember the ten talents of silver he left in trust with Gabael in Media. Before naming the deposit, he pours out a father's counsel: honor your mother and bury her beside me, give alms in proportion to what you have, keep yourself from immorality, marry within your own people, pay a laborer his wages the same day, and do to no one what you yourself would hate. He commends the God who rewards the merciful and warns against pride and idleness. These instructions gather the book's moral heart into a single charge, commending the faithfulness and almsgiving the whole tale holds up for imitation.

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 4
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 4

Tobit Chapter 4
4
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What is Tobit 4 about?

Believing his death is near, Tobit calls Tobias to remember the ten talents of silver he left in trust with Gabael in Media. Before naming the deposit, he pours out a father's counsel: honor your mother and bury her beside me, give alms in proportion to what you have, keep yourself from immorality, marry within your own people, pay a laborer his wages the same day, and do to no one what you yourself would hate. He commends the God who rewards the merciful and warns against pride and idleness. These instructions gather the book's moral heart into a single charge, commending the faithfulness and almsgiving the whole tale holds up for imitation.