Tobit 3

1 Then I was grieved, and I wept; and in my anguish I prayed, saying, 2 “You are righteous, Lord, and all your works and all your ways are acts of mercy and truth, and the judgment you judge is true and righteous for ever. 3 Remember me, and look on me. Do not punish me for my sins, or for what I did in ignorance, or for what my fathers did, the sins they sinned before you. 4 For they did not listen to your commands. So you gave us over to plunder and captivity and death, and made us a byword of reproach among all the nations where we have been scattered.

5 And now your judgments are many and true, to deal with me for my sins and my fathers’, because we have not done what you commanded and have not walked in truth before you. 6 And now deal with me as it pleases you. Command that my spirit be taken from me, so that I may be released and become earth; for it is better for me to die than to live, because I have heard false reproaches, and there is great grief in me. Command that I be released from this distress now, into the everlasting place, and do not turn your face away from me.”

7 On that same day it happened that Sarah the daughter of Raguel, in Ecbatana of Media, was reproached by her father’s servant girls, [a] 8 because she had been given to seven husbands, and Asmodaus the evil demon had killed them before they had been with her as a man is with his wife. And they said to her, “Do you not understand that you are the one who strangles your husbands? You have had seven of them already, and you have had no joy of one of them. [b] 9 Why do you beat us? If they are dead, go after them! May we never see a son or a daughter of yours.”

10 When she heard this she was so grieved that she meant to hang herself. And she said, “I am my father’s only child. If I do this, it is a disgrace to him, and I will bring his old age down to Hades in anguish.” [d]

11 Then she prayed at the window and said, “Blessed are you, Lord my God, and blessed is your holy and honored name for ever. Let all your works bless you for ever. 12 And now, Lord, I have set my eyes and my face toward you. 13 Give the word to release me from the earth, and let me hear reproach no more.

14 You know, Lord, that I am clean from all sin with a man, 15 and that I have not defiled my name or my father’s name in the land of my captivity. I am my father’s only child, and he has no child who will inherit from him, and no brother near him, and no son of his living, for whom I should keep myself as a wife. Seven of them have already perished for me — why should I live? But if it does not seem good to you to take my life, command that you look on me and have mercy on me, and that I hear reproach no more.”

16 And the prayer of both of them was heard before the glory of the great Raphael; [e] † 17 and he was sent to heal the two of them — to scale the white films from Tobit’s eyes, and to give Sarah the daughter of Raguel to Tobias the son of Tobit as his wife, and to bind Asmodaus the evil demon — because it fell to Tobias to inherit her. At that very time Tobit turned back and came into his house, and Sarah the daughter of Raguel came down from her upper room. [f]