Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is Tobit 6 about?

On the road to Media the travelers camp by the Tigris, where a great fish lunges at Tobias and Raphael tells him to seize it and keep its heart, liver, and gall. The angel explains their use: the heart and liver, burned as incense, drive off an afflicting demon, and the gall cures white films of the eyes. As they near Ecbatana, Raphael tells Tobias of Sarah, his kinswoman, whom he has the right and duty to marry, and assures him that the fish's smoke will put the demon to flight. What looked like a chance catch is quietly furnished as the means of a double healing, God supplying the remedy before the need is met.

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 6
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 6

Tobit Chapter 6
6
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What is Tobit 6 about?

On the road to Media the travelers camp by the Tigris, where a great fish lunges at Tobias and Raphael tells him to seize it and keep its heart, liver, and gall. The angel explains their use: the heart and liver, burned as incense, drive off an afflicting demon, and the gall cures white films of the eyes. As they near Ecbatana, Raphael tells Tobias of Sarah, his kinswoman, whom he has the right and duty to marry, and assures him that the fish's smoke will put the demon to flight. What looked like a chance catch is quietly furnished as the means of a double healing, God supplying the remedy before the need is met.