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Tobit 5-6 - The Hidden Guide and the Fish by the River

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This narration is from a previous version of the study and may include a combined recording of multiple chapters.

Tobit asks his son to recover a deposit. God has already sent a companion to answer two prayers. The father sees a financial errand, Anna sees the possible loss of her only child, and Tobias sees a road he does not know. The reader, remembering Tobit 3:16-17, can see mercy approaching before anyone in the house can name it.

The journey also recalls an older household. In Genesis 24:3-7, Abraham sends his servant to seek a wife among his kindred and trusts that God will send His angel ahead. Tobias sets out for money, yet the road will lead to a kinsman’s house and a bride. The return will bring both Sarah and the means of healing Tobit’s eyes. God’s answer reaches through family duties, careful arrangements, a mother’s tears, and a strange encounter by the river. None of these is beneath His care.

A Son Receives the Road (Tobit 5:1-3)

1 Tobias then answered and said, Father, I will do all things which thou hast commanded me: 2 but how can I receive the money, seeing I know him not? 3 Then he gave him the handwriting, and said unto him, Seek thee a man which may go with thee, and I will give him wages whiles I yet live: and go and receive the money.

Tobias agrees to obey, then asks how he can receive money from a stranger. His question does not undo his willingness. Obedience has made the practical difficulty worth facing. Tobit gives him the handwriting that establishes the claim and instructs him to find a companion whose wages he will pay. Trust takes the form of a document, a budget, and a person who knows the road.

The son has just heard a long charge to remember God and receive wise counsel in Tobit 4:5-19. Now that teaching acquires a task. He cannot remain at home admiring his father’s wisdom; neither can he make ignorance itself a virtue. He needs to ask, prepare, and go. Faith matures when willingness becomes careful action.

The household’s plan is narrower than God’s answer. Tobias has no reason yet to imagine Sarah’s need or the healing of his father’s eyes. His responsibility is to undertake honestly what has been entrusted to him. We can waste much strength demanding certainty about the whole future while avoiding the duty already clear: settling a debt, answering a difficult letter truthfully, or asking for help before a responsibility exceeds our knowledge.

Raphael Comes as Azarias (Tobit 5:4-15)

4 Therefore when he went to seek a man, he found Raphael that was an angel. 5 But he knew not; and he said unto him, Canst thou go with me to Rages? and knowest thou those places well? 6 To whom the angel said, I will go with thee, and I know the way well: for I have lodged with our brother Gabael.

7 Then Tobias said unto him, Tarry for me, till I tell my father. 8 Then he said unto him, Go, and tarry not. So he went in and said to his father, Behold, I have found one which will go with me. Then he said, Call him unto me, that I may know of what tribe he is, and whether he be a trusty man to go with thee. 9 So he called him, and he came in, and they saluted one another.

10 Then Tobit said unto him, Brother, shew me of what tribe and family thou art. 11 To whom he said, Dost thou seek for a tribe or family, or an hired man to go with thy son? Then Tobit said unto him, I would know, brother, thy kindred and name.

12 Then he said, I am Azarias, the son of Ananias the great, and of thy brethren. 13 Then Tobit said, Thou art welcome, brother; be not now angry with me, because I have enquired to know thy tribe and thy family; for thou art my brother, of an honest and good stock: for I know Ananias and Jonathas, sons of that great Samaias, as we went together to Jerusalem to worship, and offered the firstborn, and the tenths of the fruits; and they were not seduced with the error of our brethren: my brother, thou art of a good stock. 14 But tell me, what wages shall I give thee? wilt thou a drachm a day, and things necessary, as to mine own son? 15 Yea, moreover, if ye return safe, I will add something to thy wages.

The narrator names Raphael before Tobias recognizes him. “But he knew not” places the reader within a familiar biblical pattern: heavenly visitors can be received before their identity is understood. Abraham welcomes the visitors by his tent in Genesis 18:1-8; Lot receives the two angels in Genesis 19:1-3. Hebrews 13:2 turns such hospitality into a Christian charge to welcome strangers. The ordinary appearance of a person cannot tell us the whole worth of the encounter.

Tobit nevertheless asks about the companion’s family, fidelity, and wages. He remembers worship at Jerusalem and the temptations of his scattered people. Entrusting his son to another traveler requires judgment. God’s provision comes through this scrutiny, not by abolishing it. Christian hospitality and prudent attention to safety can belong to the same love.

Raphael conceals his identity and presents himself as “Azarias, the son of Ananias the great.” Tobit takes the family claim as the identity of a human relative. The concealment is real, and Raphael reveals his angelic identity to Tobit and Tobias in Tobit 12:15-20. That narrative fact does not make assumed identities a rule for Christian conduct. The passage gives us the mystery of this particular messenger’s mission, rather than a general defense of deception.

Language insight: “Azarias” and “Ananias”

The Hebrew names behind these Greek forms carry the senses “the LORD has helped” and “the LORD has been gracious.” Brown, Driver, and Briggs give these meanings for Azariah and Hananiah and identify their Greek forms as Azarias and Ananias.1 Within the story, the names fit what the hidden guide has been sent to do: God’s help and graciousness are already near. Their meanings illuminate the mission; they do not, by themselves, settle the ethical question raised by the assumed identity.

Tobias and the Angel, Western Renaissance painting by Filippino Lippi Source: Filippino Lippi, Tobias and the Angel, Western Renaissance painting, National Gallery of Art, public domain.

The angel accepts the work of companionship without demanding recognition. His service will direct praise to God when his name is finally known. The risen Christ’s unrecognized companionship in Luke 24:13-35 offers a later and greater resonance, while remaining distinct: Raphael is God’s servant; the traveler on the Emmaus road is the Lord Himself. For now, Tobias has simply found someone willing to go with him. Gratitude can begin before our understanding of a gift is complete.

A Blessing and Anna’s Tears (Tobit 5:16-22)

16 So they were well pleased. Then said he to Tobias, Prepare thyself for the journey, and God send you a good journey. And when his son had prepared all things for the journey, his father said, Go thou with this man, and God, which dwelleth in heaven, prosper your journey, and the angel of God keep you company. So they went forth both, and the young man’s dog with them.

17 But Anna his mother wept, and said to Tobit, Why hast thou sent away our son? is he not the staff of our hand, in going in and out before us? 18 Be not greedy to add money to money: but let it be as refuse in respect of our child. 19 For that which the Lord hath given us to live with doth suffice us. 20 Then said Tobit to her, Take no care, my sister; he shall return in safety, and thine eyes shall see him. 21 For the good angel will keep him company, and his journey shall be prosperous, and he shall return safe. 22 Then she made an end of weeping.

Tobit blesses the departure by asking that the angel of God keep Tobias company. The answer is already standing beside his son. The father who cannot see the road speaks a prayer whose fulfillment he cannot yet recognize. The scene lets us hear his blessing with joy before he can share that joy himself.

Genesis 24:7 and Genesis 24:40 give this departure its strongest biblical background. Abraham trusts that God will send His angel before the servant seeking Isaac’s bride. Tobit’s blessing uses the same pattern of a journey placed under heavenly care. Across Tobit 5-8, a father’s charge leads to a kinsman’s house, an agreement about marriage, and a woman who will return with the traveler. There are differences: Isaac remains at home, while Tobias goes himself, and his stated errand is the deposit. Yet the family living in exile is being drawn into the patriarchs’ story of promise.2

Exodus 23:20 gives the wider pattern of God sending an angel to guard Israel’s way; Psalm 91:11 (LXX 90:11) speaks of His angels keeping the faithful in their ways. Here that care reaches one household and one vulnerable son. The scale is small enough to be recognized in a parent’s blessing at the door.

Anna sees the same departure from within a mother’s fear. Tobias is the “staff of our hand,” their living support. She would surrender the money rather than risk him for it. Her protest exposes the terrible confusion that makes people expendable in the pursuit of wealth. Christ asks what gain can compensate for the loss of a soul in Mark 8:36. Anna is speaking about her child’s safety, not making that whole Gospel argument, but her love restores the right order of value: the money exists for life, and the child is beyond its price.

Tobit promises that her eyes will see Tobias again. Her tears cease, but their tenderness remains part of the story. A blessing does not require a parent to feel nothing. Nor does this family’s promised return guarantee every journey’s safety. We can prepare carefully, pray honestly, and release a loved one without pretending to possess the future.

The Fish at the Tigris (Tobit 6:1-5)

1 And as they went on their journey, they came in the evening to the river Tigris, and they lodged there. 2 And when the young man went down to wash himself, a fish leaped out of the river, and would have devoured him. 3 Then the angel said unto him, Take the fish. And the young man laid hold of the fish, and drew it to land. 4 To whom the angel said, Open the fish, and take the heart and the liver and the gall, and put them up safely. 5 So the young man did as the angel commanded him; and when they had roasted the fish, they did eat it: then they both went on their way, till they drew near to Ecbatane.

The journey reaches the Tigris at evening, and Tobias goes down to wash. A fish suddenly threatens him. The reader of Jonah 1:17 may hear a distant resonance with the great fish in the story of Nineveh’s prophet, but Tobit’s scene has its own work to do. What first appears as danger will become food for the road and medicine for two households.

Raphael gives a concrete command, and Tobias draws the fish onto land. He is then told to preserve its heart, liver, and gall. Their use remains unexplained until he asks about it in the next verses. The narrative lets the young man act before he can see the full purpose, while still allowing him a genuine question. Teachability is compatible with seeking understanding.

The meal belongs to the journey’s ordinary provision. The travelers eat, continue, and approach Ecbatane. Later Raphael will explain the character of his own apparent eating in Tobit 12:19; the Tobit 11-12 study considers that disclosure. Here the attention rests on what Tobias carries onward. The means of healing are already in his keeping before he has met the woman they will help.

The Gall, the Heart, and the Liver (Tobit 6:6-8)

6 Then the young man said to the angel, Brother Azarias, to what use is the heart and the liver and the gall of the fish? 7 And he said unto him, Touching the heart and the liver, if a devil or an evil spirit trouble any, we must make a smoke thereof before the man or the woman, and the party shall be no more vexed. 8 As for the gall, it is good to anoint a man that hath whiteness in his eyes, and he shall be healed.

Tobias asks what the preserved organs are for, and Raphael names two kinds of affliction: an evil spirit’s torment and the whitening of the eyes. The reader knows Sarah and Tobit. The instruction therefore joins this roadside event to the prayers of Tobit 3:16-17. Tobias’s errand is acquiring the means by which mercy will reach both sufferers.

The strange material means remain within that account of answered prayer. God sent Raphael; Raphael instructs Tobias; Tobias will act; and the couple will be commanded to pray to the merciful God in Tobit 6:17. Removing the fish from these relationships would turn an act of obedient trust into a supposed technique for mastering spiritual powers. The episode gives no warrant for copying its procedure as a private treatment or using charms against demons. Spiritual distress calls for the Church’s pastoral care, and illness also calls for appropriate medical help.

Creation can serve the Creator’s compassion. Naaman washes in the Jordan according to Elisha’s word in 2 Kings 5:14; Christ uses clay and washing when He heals the man born blind in John 9:6-7. These are distinct events, but each resists the idea that divine healing must leave material life untouched. The fish is not instituted as a sacrament. It can nevertheless help an Orthodox reader receive the goodness of creation without reducing the Church’s mysteries to an impersonal force. The Lord heals persons in communion with Himself, and our hands remain hands that receive.

Tobit’s eyes were wounded in the bodily circumstances of his merciful life. Their healing will also arrive through material things. The God who hears his prayer has not overlooked the particular pain of those eyes. This is a consolation for anyone whose illness has become an abstraction to other people: the sufferer’s body remains personally precious to God.

Toward Sarah and the Next Obedience (Tobit 6:9-17)

A note on the places. Brenton retains “Rages” at verse 9, although Sarah’s home and the arrival at the end of verse 17 are at Ecbatane. NETS prints the shorter Greek form’s “Rhagai” at the corresponding Tobit 6:10, while the longer form represented chiefly by Sinaiticus reads Ecbatana there. The reference to returning from Rages in Brenton 6:12 is different: both Greek forms retain Rhaga at the corresponding NETS 6:13, the place of Gabael’s deposit. The two names should not be silently interchanged throughout the passage. See the Tobit Overview for the note on the text.3

9 And when they were come near to Rages, 10 the angel said to the young man, Brother, to day we shall lodge with Raguel, who is thy cousin; he also hath one only daughter, named Sara; I will speak for her, that she may be given thee for a wife. 11 For to thee doth the right of her appertain, seeing thou only art of her kindred. 12 And the maid is fair and wise: now therefore hear me, and I will speak to her father; and when we return from Rages we will celebrate the marriage: for I know that Raguel cannot marry her to another according to the law of Moses, but he shall be guilty of death, because the right of inheritance doth rather appertain to thee than to any other.

13 Then the young man answered the angel, I have heard, brother Azarias, that this maid hath been given to seven men, who all died in the marriage chamber. 14 And now I am the only son of my father, and I am afraid, lest, if I go in unto her, I die, as the others before: for a wicked spirit loveth her, which hurteth no one except those which come unto her: wherefore I also fear lest I die, and bring my father’s and my mother’s life because of me to the grave with sorrow: for they have no other son to bury them.

15 Then the angel said to him, Dost thou not remember the precepts that thy father gave thee, that thou shouldest marry a wife of thine own kindred? wherefore hear me, O my brother; for she shall be given thee to wife; and make thou no reckoning of the evil spirit; for this same night shall she be given thee in marriage. 16 And when thou shalt come into the marriage chamber, thou shalt take the ashes of perfume, and shalt lay upon them some of the heart and liver of the fish, and shalt make a smoke with it: 17 and the devil shall smell it, and flee away, and never come again any more: but when thou shalt come to her, rise up both of you, and pray to God which is merciful, who will have pity on you, and save you: fear not, for she is appointed unto thee from the beginning; and thou shalt preserve her, and she shall go with thee. Moreover I suppose that she shall bear thee children. Now when Tobias had heard these things, he loved her, and his heart was effectually joined to her. And he came to Ecbatane.

Raphael now directs Tobias toward Raguel and Sarah. The recovered deposit will no longer be the only gift returning to Nineveh. Sarah, whose distress the reader has known since chapter 3, is brought into Tobias’s future as a person to love. The next household on the road has been living through its own grief.

The language of kinship and inheritance belongs to Israel’s provision for families. Numbers 27:1-11 allows daughters to inherit when there is no son; Numbers 36:6-9 keeps an heiress’s property within her father’s tribe through marriage within that tribe. These laws illuminate the obligation Raphael describes. They do not prescribe the death penalty stated here for Raguel, nor do they simply require every heiress to marry one named cousin. Tobit expresses the claim upon Raguel in the strongest terms. The Law supplies the family setting without furnishing a matching penalty.4

Tobias’s fear is more than self-preservation. If he dies, his parents will have no other son to bury them. Their future grief weighs upon him because he has heard and remembered Tobit 4:3-4. The counsel that formed his conscience now makes the danger especially painful. Love can make a person afraid precisely because another person’s welfare matters.

Raphael answers by recalling Tobit’s marriage counsel and by directing the future spouses to prayer. The words “rise up both of you” make Sarah a fellow petitioner before God. Tobias will neither manage her suffering from a safe distance nor approach her as an object of appetite. He is being led toward a shared appeal to the God who has mercy and saves. The words about her being appointed for him belong to this particular story of angelic guidance; they are no license to pressure someone into marriage by claiming to know God’s hidden decree.

At the close, Tobias loves Sarah and his heart is “effectually joined to her.” Genesis 24:67 ends the search for Isaac’s bride with his love for Rebekah; Genesis 29:20 describes Jacob’s years of service made light by his love for Rachel. Tobit draws upon that world of family and promise, while bringing two frightened people toward a prayer they will speak together. Love begins here to take responsibility for another person’s good. The marriage and its prayer follow in the Tobit 7-8 study.

The Church’s Voice in Worship 📖

The Katameros cycle distributed in Coptic Lectionary Data 1.3.1 lists these chapters among the morning prophecies for Friday of the Sixth Week of Great Lent, dividing chapter 6 into two readings. The fasting household hears a father bless, a mother weep, and a son learn to receive help. Trust becomes teachable in these ordinary forms of dependence.5

Spiritual Fruit 🍇

  1. Let willingness become careful action. Tobias asks how to receive the money and accepts the document and companion. Before a difficult responsibility, identify what you genuinely need to know and whom you can responsibly ask. Prayer does not make preparation beneath you.

  2. Receive help without demanding a revelation. Thank someone who has carried part of your burden through advice, work, or companionship. The value of their service does not depend upon your seeing its whole consequence.

  3. Bless a loved one without silencing grief. Name one fear in prayer, then offer a concrete blessing rather than repeating the fear as an accusation. Anna’s concern for her son also asks whether work or money has displaced a person’s true worth in our decisions.

  4. Bring bodily suffering before the Lord. Seek the care you need and pray for the person whose pain others have stopped noticing. The gall preserved for Tobit’s eyes keeps divine mercy close to a particular wounded body.

  5. Turn fear into shared prayer. Tobias remembers his parents, and Raphael directs him to pray with Sarah. Where a duty touches another person’s life, resist deciding only within your own anxiety. Listen, seek sound counsel, and ask God’s mercy together when that is possible.

The travelers leave the river with food and with medicine whose full purpose Tobias is only beginning to learn. Ahead is a household he has not yet entered; behind him are parents he loves. Place before Christ the people held within your own next decision. Ask for enough light to act faithfully, enough humility to receive help, and enough love to pray for the life that touches yours.

Footnotes

  1. Brown, Driver, and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon, עֲזַרְיָה, introductory etymology and Greek form Αζαριας, H5838; חֲנַנְיָה, introductory etymology and Greek form Ἀνανίας, H2608. The meanings concern the Hebrew names underlying the Greek forms, not a sentence translated from the Greek narrative. ↩

  2. Genesis 24:3-7 and Genesis 24:40, Brenton. The story also includes reception in the kinsman’s household and the woman’s return with the servant, Genesis 24:23-61; Isaac himself remains at home. ↩

  3. Di Lella, NETS Tobit, parallel GI and GII at Tobit 6:10: Rhagai in GI, Ecbatana in GII. At Tobit 6:13 both forms refer to returning from Rhaga. Brenton labels the corresponding clauses Tobit 6:9 and Tobit 6:12. GII’s principal witness is Sinaiticus; the introduction also identifies manuscript 319’s partial GII text. ↩

  4. Numbers 27:1-11 and Numbers 36:6-9, Brenton. These are the relevant inheritance and heiress-marriage provisions; they contain no matching death penalty for the father described in Tobit 6:12. ↩

  5. Coptic Lectionary Data 1.3.1 (@andraws/lectionary-data), Katameros cycle, Friday of the Sixth Week of Great Lent, morning prophecies: the three Tobit ranges listed above. Package assignment; dated Coptic Reader verification is separate. ↩

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