SESSION SIX: Getting Deepter 3:7-17

Sarah was separated from Tobit by over two hundred miles of mountains and desert. There are three points of connection, however, between these two characters. The first is that they are both having a really bad day. Tobit’s blindness happens on the same day as Sarah’s maids cause the “final straw” to break in her mind. You may notice that the dialogue switches in this section from first person (I, Tobit…) to third (For she had…). The reason for this is, obviously, if Tobit were telling the story, he is blind in Nineveh and could only have heard this part. It also allows the story teller to switch to the far easier third-person narration. Secondly, Tobit and Sarah are related as we will hear later. One commentator said, “Sarah’s father, Raguel, may have had the same great-great-great-great-grandfather as Tobit inasmuch as they had the same name.”[1] They are definitely from the same Israelite tribe, Naphtali.

We discover in this section that poor Sarah has been haunted by a demon named Asmodeus, an adaptation of the Persian Aeshma Daeva, the god of wrath, this demon is mentioned in the apocryphal book of First Enoch. Sarah’s true curse is that she cannot do what all women of her time pined to do, provide the next generation. Our translation is very direct, “Before they could have intercourse with her.” A literal translation would be closer to “they had not been able to be with her as you be with a woman”. Sarah, undoubtedly, feels frustrated by her circumstances. Yet, similar to Tobit, Sarah does not blame God. It is not clear even if she is aware of the presence of Asmodeus or if she believes herself the victim of some kind of string of bad luck, even at her low point, she never even gets angry at God, let alone denying his existence or benevolence. She is a strong Jewish woman similar to another Sarah (see Genesis 11:29-31 and 18:9-12), wife of Abraham, who also had trouble having children. This Sarah’s frustration, nonetheless, leads her to wish that her life was ended. After eliminating the possibility of suicide as something that would deeply disappoint her father, she prays to God for death. Yet, even her prayer has the slightest semblance of hope attached in the final thought. Much more direct and personal than Tobit’s, it nonetheless, reflects the last connection between these two: in their trials they turn to God for help.

These cries turn the story to its third location, before the throne of God in all it’s glory. The phrase “Glory of God” would have evoked rich imagery for the Jewish audience of God going before the Arc in a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire. They would have thought of the sacrifice of the Temple and the God who only Moses could have seen. From this glory, the Angel Raphael¹ is sent. His name literally means “God has healed” and indicates the kind of action that will take place in the remainder of the story. In some sense, the suspense is gone since we know that God has taken action to fix these two. But, this allows us to turn our gaze from a suspenseful, action-packed ending to the prayers and words of the text to come.

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[1] Moore, Carey; Tobit Anchor Bible Commentary c. 1996 p. 156