Two Prayers on the Same Day

When the army of Assyria came and carried the northern tribes of Israel away, one of the people they took was a man of the tribe of Naphtali named Tobit. He was marched off to Nineveh, the great city, with Anna his wife and Tobias his little boy. Long before that, when Tobit was young and still in his own country, everybody in his tribe had stopped going up to Jerusalem to worship God and had begun bowing down to a calf instead. Tobit went anyway. Year after year, on his own, he made the journey up to Jerusalem for the feasts, and brought his gifts to the priests there, and gave a share to people who had nothing, the way his grandmother Deborah had taught him. So in Nineveh he simply went on being the same man. When everybody else ate whatever the Assyrians ate, he kept to the food he had been brought up to eat. He gave his bread to hungry people and his clothes to people who had none. And the king took a liking to him and made him his buyer, and sent him traveling as far away as Media. And on one of those journeys Tobit left a great bag of silver with a relative named Gabael, in a town called Rages, for safe keeping. Then the roads went bad and he could not go back for it.

Now there was one thing Tobit did that could have got him killed. The king of Assyria in those days was a cruel man. When he was angry he killed people, and had the bodies thrown out behind the city wall and left lying there, and nobody was allowed to bury them. And Tobit buried them. He went out and found them and carried them away and dug graves for them, quietly, at night, when there was nobody about. And when the king sent men to look for the bodies, the bodies were gone. And somebody told the king it was Tobit. He heard that they were hunting for him to put him to death, and he ran and hid; and everything he owned was taken away. When it was over, all he had left in the whole world was Anna his wife and Tobias his son. Then the king was killed by two of his own sons, and a new king came. And it so happened that the new king’s chief officer — the man who kept the royal seal and counted all the money of the kingdom — was Tobit’s own nephew, Achiacharus. He asked for his uncle, and Tobit came home to Nineveh.

Not long after, at the feast of the seven weeks, a fine dinner was laid out for Tobit, dish after dish of it. He looked at the loaded table and said to his son, “Go out, Tobias, and find somebody poor among our own people — somebody who keeps the Lord in mind — and bring him back to eat with us. I will wait for you.” And Tobias went out; and he came back and said, “Father — one of our own people has been killed and thrown out in the marketplace.” And Tobit got up from that table without tasting a bite of it, and went and carried the man in and laid him in a room and shut the door until the sun went down. Then he came back and washed and ate his dinner, and he ate it crying, because he remembered what the prophet Amos had said: ‘Your feasts will be turned into mourning, and all your glad songs into a sad one.’ And when it was dark he went out and dug a grave and buried the man. And his neighbors laughed at him over the wall. They said, “Not frightened any more, then! They nearly put him to death over this the last time, and he ran away — and here he is, out burying the dead again.”

That same night he came home from the grave too tired and too dusty to go inside, and he lay down to sleep by the wall of his own courtyard with his face uncovered. And he did not know there were sparrows nesting in the wall above his head. While his eyes were open the sparrows let their warm droppings fall into them, and white films came over his eyes. He went to one doctor after another, and not one of them could do a thing. Tobit was blind. So Anna went out to work. She spun and wove for other people, and they paid her wages; and once they gave her a young goat as a present on top of the pay. And when Tobit heard it bleating in the house he said, “Where has that goat come from? It is not stolen, is it? Take it back to its owners. We are not allowed to eat anything stolen.” And Anna said, “Nobody stole it. It was a present, on top of the wage.” But he would not believe her, and he kept on and on about giving it back, until Anna turned round and said the hardest thing anybody had said to him yet: “And where are all your kind deeds now? Where is all that goodness of yours? Look at you. Anyone can see what it has come to.”

And that broke him. Tobit went off by himself and cried; and then he prayed. And this is what he prayed: “You are right in everything you do, Lord, and everything you do is mercy and truth. Remember me. Look at me. Do not punish me for the wrong I have done, or for what my fathers did before me. Do with me whatever pleases you — only let me go now. Let me die, and be earth again. It is better for me to die than to live, because I have to listen to things that are not true, and there is so much sadness in me.”

And on that very same day, hundreds of miles away, a young woman was saying almost exactly the same thing. Her name was Sarah, and she lived in the city of Ecbatana in the land of Media. She was the only child of a man named Raguel and his wife Edna, and something dreadful had been happening to her. Seven times she had been married. And seven times, on the very night of the wedding, before ever she and her husband had lived together as husband and wife, the husband had died. An evil spirit named Asmodaus was doing it. Nobody could stop it, and nobody knew what to do, and everybody in that house was afraid. And that day her father’s servant girls turned on her and said, “You are the one who strangles your husbands. Seven of them! And not one day of gladness out of any of them. Why do you beat us? Go after them, if they are dead. May we never see a child of yours.” And Sarah went upstairs to her room, and she was so unhappy that she thought of ending her own life. And then she thought of her father. She was his only child, and he was old, and it would shame him and break his heart. So she did not. She went to the window instead, and opened it, and prayed: “Blessed are you, Lord my God, and blessed is your holy name for ever. I have turned my face towards you. You know I have done nothing wrong. I have kept myself clean, here in the country we were carried away to. Let me hear no more of this. Take me out of the earth — or, if you would rather not, then look at me, and be kind to me, and let nobody ever say these things to me again.”

Two prayers, on one day, at the same hour, from two people who did not know that the other one existed. One in Nineveh, from an old blind man crying in his courtyard. One in Ecbatana, from a young woman at an upstairs window. And both of them went up together and were heard in front of the glory of God. And Raphael was sent. Raphael is a messenger of the Lord, and what he was sent to do was three things: to take the white films off Tobit’s eyes; to give Sarah to Tobias, Tobit’s son, to be his wife; and to tie up the evil spirit Asmodaus, so that it could never harm anybody again. And at that very moment Tobit finished praying and went back into his house, and Sarah came down the stairs from her upper room. Neither of them knew one single thing about it.

That same day Tobit remembered the silver he had left with Gabael at Rages, all those years ago. And he said to himself: I have just asked God to let me die — I had better tell Tobias about the money before I go. So he called his son in; and then he told him a great deal more besides, the way a man does when he thinks he is saying everything for the last time. He said, “My child, when I die, bury me. And do not forget your mother. Honor her every day she lives, and do what makes her glad, and never make her sad. Remember what she went through for you before ever you were born. And when she dies, bury her beside me, in the one grave.” And he went on, “Keep God in mind all your days, and never set your heart on doing wrong. Give to people who have nothing, and do not do it grudgingly. If you have a great deal, give a great deal; and if you have only a little, do not be afraid to give out of the little. Kindness like that is a treasure you are putting away for yourself, against a day when you will need it — for kindness rescues a person from death.” And he was still not finished. “Pay a working man his wages the same day he earns them; do not keep them overnight. Never do to anybody the thing you would hate to have done to you. Do not drink until you are drunk. Ask advice of anybody who is wise, and never think good advice is beneath you. And bless the Lord always, and ask him to make your road straight.” And then, at last, he came to the money. “Seven hundred and fifty pounds of silver, child, left with Gabael son of Gabrias, at Rages in Media. So do not be afraid that we are poor. We are not poor at all, if you fear God.”

And Tobias said, “I will do everything you have told me, father. But how am I to get the money? I have never met the man in my life, and he has never met me.” So Tobit gave him the written note that proved the silver was theirs, and said, “Then find yourself somebody to travel with you, and I will pay him his wages while I am still here to do it. And go and fetch the money.” So Tobias went out to look for a man to go with him. And he found Raphael standing there — and he did not know that Raphael was a messenger of God. And Tobias said to him, “Can you come with me to Rages in Media? Do you know your way about those parts?” And the messenger said, “I will go with you. I know the road, and I have stayed in Gabael’s house.” So Tobias brought him home to meet his father; and Tobit, who was careful about such things, asked the stranger what family he came from. And he said, “I am Azariah, son of Hananiah the great — one of your own people.” And Tobit was delighted, because he had known that family in Jerusalem long ago, and they were good people. So he settled the wages — half a piece of silver a day, and his keep, the same as for his own son — and said, “And I will pay you more than that, if the two of you come home safe and well.” Then he turned to his son and said, “Go with the man. May God, who lives in heaven, make your journey a good one — and may his messenger travel with you.” And off the two of them went; and the boy’s dog got up and went too.

But Anna cried. She said to Tobit, “Why have you sent our boy away? Is he not the stick we lean on, going out and coming in in front of us? Do not go piling money on money. Beside our child it is sweepings.” And Tobit said, “Do not worry, sister. He will come back safe and well, and your own eyes will see him. A good messenger is traveling with him. His road will go well.” And she stopped crying.

In the evening the two travellers came to the river Tigris and camped beside it. And Tobias went down into the water to wash himself — and a great fish came up out of the river at him with its mouth open, meaning to swallow him. And the messenger said, quite calmly, “Take hold of the fish.” So Tobias took hold of the fish and heaved it up onto the bank. And the messenger said, “Now cut it open. Take out the heart, and the liver, and the gall, and put them away safely.” So Tobias did exactly that. Then they roasted the rest of the fish and had it for supper, and in the morning they walked on. And after a while Tobias said, “Brother Azariah — what are they for? The heart and the liver and the gall of a fish?” And he said, “The heart and the liver are for making smoke in front of anybody who is being troubled by a demon or an evil spirit; and then the trouble will not come back. And the gall is for rubbing on the eyes of a man who has white films over them. It will make him well.” And Tobias put them away in his bag and thought no more about it. He had no idea that he was carrying, in that bag, both halves of the answer to two prayers.

When they were getting near Ecbatana, the messenger said, “Tonight, brother, we are going to stay with a man named Raguel. He is your own kinsman, and he has an only daughter named Sarah. I am going to speak to her father about her, so that she may be given to you as your wife — because she belongs in your family, and you are her nearest. And she is beautiful, and she has good sense.” And Tobias said, in rather a small voice, “Brother Azariah, I have heard about that girl. She has been given to seven men, and every one of them died on the wedding night. There is a demon that loves her, and it harms nobody except the men who come near her. I am my father’s only son. If I die too, my father and my mother will go down to their graves grieving over me — and there is nobody else left to bury them.” And the messenger said, “Do you not remember what your father told you — that you were to marry somebody out of your own family? Listen to me, brother. She will be given to you tonight, and never mind the demon. When you go into the room, take the ashes of the incense and lay the heart and the liver of the fish on them, and make the smoke; and the demon will smell it and go, and it will never come back, not ever. And then the two of you stand up and call out to God, who is merciful, and he will save you and be kind to you. Do not be afraid. She was made ready for you from the very beginning. You will save her, and she will come away with you — and I think you will have children.” And when Tobias heard that, he loved her; and from that minute he could not think about anything else.