Tob 3
1
Then I being grieved did weep, and in my sorrow prayed, saying,
2
O Lord, you are just, and all your works and all your ways are mercy and truth, and
you judge truly and justly for ever.
3
Remember me, and look on me, punish me not for my sins and ignorances, and the sins
of my fathers, who have sinned before you:
4
For they obeyed not your commandments: wherefore you have delivered us for a spoil,
and to captivity, and to death, and for a proverb of reproach to all the nations among
whom we are dispersed.
5
And now your judgements are many and true: deal with me according to my sins and my
fathers’: because we have not kept your commandments, neither have walked in truth
before you.
6
Now therefore deal with me as seems best to you, and command my spirit to be taken
from me, that I may be dissolved, and become earth: for it is profitable for me to
die rather than to live, because I have heard false reproaches, and have much sorrow:
command therefore that I may now be delivered out of this distress, and go into the
everlasting place: turn not your face away from me.
7
It came to pass the same day, that in Ecbatane a city of Media Sara the daughter of
Raguel was also reproached by her father’s maids;
8
Because that she had been married to seven husbands, whom Asmodeus the evil spirit
had killed, before they had lain with her. Do you not know, said they, that you have
strangled your husbands? you have had already seven husbands, neither were you named
after any of them.
9
Wherefore do you beat us for them? if they be dead, go your ways after them, let us
never see of you either son or daughter.
10
When she heard these things, she was very sorrowful, so that she thought to have strangled
herself; and she said, I am the only daughter of my father, and if I do this, it shall
be a reproach to him, and I shall bring his old age with sorrow to the grave.
11
Then she prayed toward the window, and said, Blessed are you, O Lord my God, and your
holy and glorious name is blessed and honourable for ever: let all your works praise
you for ever.
12
And now, O Lord, I set I mine eyes and my face toward you,
13
And say, Take me out of the earth, that I may hear no more the reproach.
14
You know, Lord, that I am pure from all sin with man,
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And that I never polluted my name, nor the name of my father, in the land of my captivity:
I am the only daughter of my father, neither has he any child to be his heir, neither
any near kinsman, nor any son of his alive, to whom I may keep myself for a wife:
my seven husbands are already dead; and why should I live? but if it please not you
that I should die, command some regard to be had of me, and pity taken of me, that
I hear no more reproach.
16
So the prayers of them both were heard before the majesty of the great God.
17
And Raphael was sent to heal them both, that is, to scale away the whiteness of Tobit’s
eyes, and to give Sara the daughter of Raguel for a wife to Tobias the son of Tobit;
and to bind Asmodeus the evil spirit; because she belonged to Tobias by right of inheritance.
The selfsame time came Tobit home, and entered into his house, and Sara the daughter
of Raguel came down from her upper chamber.