Alright, this third lesson on this Bible study on Tobit, God's Faithful, Renant, and Exile. We're tackling chapters 4 through 9, and the title for lesson 3 here is Wrath, Fail, Heels, God's Faithful, and Exile. So what I've done, if you remember here, looking at the syllabus, I'm going on this little theme here of how God's Faithful is suffering in exile, Wrath, Fail, Heels, God's Faithful, Suffering, that's this lesson, and then next lesson is God's Faithful, our rejoicing in exile. And there's a little bit of healing steel too, we need to do in the next lesson, so it's a little bit of a carryover, which is just fine.
So in chapter 4 here, we're going to continue with our story. Just a quick, quick recap. Chapters 1 through 3 introduced our main characters. Tobit speaks in the first person singular, saying this is what happened to him when he was living in Israel, he's from the tribe of Naftali, he was exiled into Assyria, and he lives in the capital city of Nineveh, he does all these great works, corporal works of mercy, we call them now, and then things are going pretty difficult, and there's shifts and reigns of the Assyrian kings, so by the way, check out that chart that I put together for you on that.
And he suffers tremendously because even despite the fact that he's doing great good for God and towards his fellow Israelites that may be in exile with him, he is blinded, he is out in the courtyard, observing the law, he's unclean for burying a dead guy, and he is blinded because, unfortunately, in kind of in a gross way, some birds poop in his eyes, and that's no fun, you're actually blinded him, and so he's suffering at the same time, his kin's woman who lives some hundreds of miles away, she's suffering as well because she's having a little bit of a marital problem, she can't keep a husband, but no fault of her own, she's a great girl as we're going to see, she's perfect for Tobias, but there's this demon Esmodius who kills these seven dudes because they are driven by lust, and they fall headlong into what I would argue, mortals send graves in of lust, and that seems to be what's going on there. So they both pray to God at the same time, they're suffering in exile, and God sends a Raphael to the end of chapter 3 to heal them. Raphael's name means God heals, and that's the great irony of names in this book, and really throughout all the scripture, remember names mean things, and they're part of the story, and they give insight into the story. So Tobit and Tobias is on the theme of God's goodness, and then Raphael is God's healing, we're going to see even more names coming to play here soon, and that's always really, really fun.
So Raphael brings their prayers up to God, I love that imagery of how the angel brings the prayers of God's faithful up to his throne, and that we saw that in Revelation, it's all good stuff. So now here in chapter 4, Tobit has his intended last will in Testament because he thinks he's going to die, and he wants to give this unto Tobias all this great instructions before this happens, especially giving him the silver that he remembers. So with that, then let's look at chapter 4 verses 1 and 2 really quickly. It says on that day, Tobit remembered the money on which he left in trust with Gaba El at Raja's in media, and he said to himself, I've asked for death, why do I not call my son Tobias, that I may explain to him about the money before I die?
So he thinks he's going to die, and that's just confidence in prayer, by the way. He asks for God to kill him, and he knows that God is going to hear his prayer, and he's going to die. Well, sure, he will die, but not yet. God says, I will take you, Tobit, but not yet.
That's kind of what I imagined God saying to him. He has going to have many more decades to live. God is going to do great things for him, heal his eyes, and bring joy to his family. And he's going to die in the West.
Tobit doesn't know that at this point, so he thinks God is going to answer his prayer, and he wants to prepare his son to receive his trust, the ten talents of silver that he left in trust with Gaba El. He wants Tobias to claim before he dies. A question often comes up at this point, hold on a second, Tobit has been living in poverty for quite some time now, ever since he was blinded. We don't exactly know how long could be four years.
There's a variation of that towards the end of the book, which different manuscripts vary, but let's just say for many years, Tobit has been blind. His poor wife has been taking odd jobs here and there, causing marital strife as we discussed. Why didn't he go get the ten talents of silver before right now? Why wait till the moment before he thinks he's going to die?
Well, an answer to that question might simply be because if you remember in chapter one, I'll take you to there. Let's go to chapter one verse 14. This is when he says that he went into media and he left the ten talents of silver in trust with Gaba El. But then when Shalman Ezra the king died, Sonega ribbed his son reigned in his place and under him the highways were unsafe, so he can no longer go into media.
That might be the answer to the question of why he delays along because things weren't looking so good. They weren't so hot, they weren't so safe under this new regime. And so that probably time went on and he realizes, okay, well things have changed and now I'm going to go into a sin Tobias. And it's still probably unsafe, which is why as the story goes on, Raphael is hired to help him.
So that's probably answered the question of why he delays along because things were unsafe and he couldn't travel any longer. Another cool little insight, or a little, I call it an insight, it's not really so much an insight as a trivia. People ask how much money was this? Ten talents of silver.
Well, if you look at a talent was equivalent to somewhere between 75 to 100 pounds. So if we err conservatively, and say it was just 75 pounds, ten talents makes 750 pounds. You divide, you times that by 16 ounces per pound and you've got 12,000 ounces. That's what he's going to get.
I mean, this is broad. You know, scholars are going to talk about different types of pounds that silver is waiting, but whatever. Okay, you got a pound is 16 ounces. Now, as of this recording, I looked it up just for fun.
I looked it up as of right now this morning. A ounce of silver goes for $30.51 bringing the grand total approximately in modern day terms to $36,000. Well, actually $366,120 to be precise. Now, you could probably buy a lot more with money back then than you can now.
I mean, for crying out loud, you have to take out a small loan just to fill up your gas tank these days. But nevertheless, I thought that was really interesting. I wanted to share that with you. That's how much approximately in modern day terms the silver would be worth.
So, you know, he's not going to be a billionaire. You know, he's not going to be Elon Musk by any means, but he's going to definitely live a comfortable life after he gets this. So what he wants to do, so what Toba wants to do now is to teach his son what true wealth really means, what true happiness really means and how to handle this great wealth that he's about to get him to go from $0 to $366,000 in modern day terms. That's a pretty big deal.
So he's going to give his intended last testament, his deathbed speech. It's not really his deathbed speech. His true deathbed speech comes in the next lesson at the end of the book. This is very, if it's a pattern and a parallel with so many other places in the Old Testament of righteous men and righteous fathers giving their final words to their children.
Moses did this. That's basically the whole book of Deuteronomy. Joshua did this at the end of the book of Joshua. You remember his famous words that are on Hobby Lobby plaques everywhere.
You know, as for me in my house, we will serve the Lord. I choose this day whom we will serve as for me in my house. We will serve the Lord. He's telling his people and his family the same thing to behave and obey God and treat each other well, all that stuff.
Samuel says something similar. David says this to Solomon at his deathbed, Mattathias, which was a father of Judas Nakabeus and Mattathias. Mattathias, Mattathias says this to his children. It goes on and on and on.
It's really beautiful. And that's my prayer. I want to have the ability to say beautiful things to my children and my family before I die. We have this prayer in the Catholic faith.
The Lord save us from an unforeseen death. The last name that you want is to be hit by a Mack truck or something like that. And just be in an accident and just all of a sudden boom, your life is done. I would much rather see my death coming a mile away through illness, cancer, something like that, and be able to suffer and to penance for my sins, and also to be able to stay goodbye to my family.
And then to tell them what Tobit tells his son and what David told his son and all of this stuff is just be the holy, be righteous, stick to the faith. So, all right, on that point, I got a little quote from your commentary from your commentary. One of your commentaries, the Catholic side of the Bible says, it's this the deathbed speech that Tobit gives to his son Tobias summarizes the moral and religious instruction of the book. It's Maxims resembling those in the wisdom books of the Old Testament, especially Proverbs and C-Rack.
And I'm going to share some quotes from C-Rack with you to prove that point here as we move on. It goes on, it is no coincidence that Tobit's instruction is largely concerned with the proper use of material wealth since he is sending his son to retrieve his family's fortune. The young Tobit's most understanding that true prosperity comes from living wisely, that is observing the Lord's commandments and being generous and giving alms. Ironically, and this is an irony we're going to see many times, Tobit has a clear vision of life's most important duties in spite of his blindness.
That's the whole point that Tobit's can't see physically, but he gives that he can see the truth of the matter. He understands he has wisdom, and we're going to see that as we go along in these exhortations. Alright, so what I've done is I've broken all these down, but the main points of advice and commandments that he gives this on, I put down here in my notes for you in the lesson outline here. I'm going to follow along on a recent different text, and I want to spend a considerable amount of time on alms giving us some of these other things I'll mention kind of in passing pretty quickly, just because there's a lot more to talk about in this lesson.
So first, we'll begin in verse 3, Tobit chapter 4 verse 3, talking about honoring his parents. Now remember, Tobit thinks he's going to die, so what does he say first? So this is honoring the fourth commandment. And really, this whole section here is about honoring his parents, and I did put a little reference to the catechism, some paragraphs about honoring parents, and consult those if you want to.
But he says, bury me. I'm keeping his going to die, and honor your mother when I'm gone and bury her in the same grave as me when she dies. And the next special point here, before I move on to the alms giving here soon, is he says, remember all of her travails or difficulties when you were yet to be able to get to the end of the world. And that makes me wonder if perhaps when Tobit was exiled, if his wife was pregnant with Tobites in the middle of that trauma, it's possible there's arguments for and against him, so I'll just sort of rant about this coming to me here.
We've got to go research it further, but it's really, really interesting, as you consider how difficult that would have been for anybody but any woman that's in travail. And when Jesus says something very similar, when he's talking about the future destruction of the Jerusalem temple, we'll go to those who are nursing in those days. So it's possible that Anna, Tobius' mother, was pregnant with him, making it all the more difficult during that time period. That's really interesting to think about.
In other words, the next commandment is to live a righteous life. He begins, remember the Lord, our God, all your days. I talked about this, I'm not going to spend too long on it, but the word for remember is a car. That is a covenantal remembrance.
It's not just a covenantal remembrance. It's not just a remember that you've got a dentist appointment next week. It's not nothing like that. It's covenantal remembrance is being faithful to the person that you're in covenant with.
And that's what he's saying, is be faithful to God. Remember, as a car, all your days, my son, refuse to sin or to transgress his commandments. Live uprightly all days of your life and do not walk in the ways of wrongdoing. For if you do what is true, your ways will prosper through your deeds.
Oh, those are some great words right there. It's very evocative of Joshua. If you go to Joshua chapter one, the same thing is basically told to Joshua from God himself. Say, look, hold fast.
Do not depart to the right hand or the left hand. If you meditate on the law and all that you do and you're faithful to the law, you will prosper in all of your ways. That's something that's repeated in all these deathbed speeches. Be faithful to God and God will bless you and you will prosper.
Okay? That's what he says, little righteous life and God will make you prosper. Then he goes on to talk about what we call almsgiving. And this is really, really important stuff here.
And it uses language that can be kind of interesting to some people and really confusing to some people. And I'd like to really go beyond the commentaries and give some insights of my own about this. And not to say that I'm the other person that's mentioned this, but it's not very frequently taught. And I think it's crucial, especially as you understand, that there's a lot of exhortations in connection with the sermon on the mount, as well as what we call the triple concubisense and rolling all these lessons together.
So I think this is very valuable to spend some time on it. So let me read for you verses 7 through 11, and I want to unpack a few things for you. So verse 7, he goes on saying, give alms from your possessions to all who live uprightly and do not let your eye begrudge to give when you make it. Do not turn your face away from any poor man, and the face of God will not be turned away from you.
If you have any possessions, make your gift from them in proportion. If you do not be afraid to give according to the little that you have. So you will be laying a good treasure for yourself against the day of necessity, for charity delivers from death and keeps you from entering the darkness. And for all who practice it, charity is an excellent offering in the presence of the Most High.
I will stop right there. Now what I want you to take note of, you can highlight it in your Bible if it's right in front of you. He's talking about your eye. Don't let your eye begrudge to give when you make it.
He's going to repeat it down below as well. So you have to underline that whole concept of don't let your eye begrudge to gift. You have a generous eye towards other people. And then also verse 9 about when you do this, you lay up treasure for yourself against the day of necessity.
What day of necessity is that? Well, that's probably judgment. It seems very clear. It's judgment when you stand before God, you know when you're in heaven.
Essentially what we would say now is you're going to have good treasures in heaven. Those are some important concepts here. Alright, now this whole idea of having a generous eye towards the needy is something that's going to be found in the Old Testament as well as the new. You have to have an eye to see the situation of the plight of your brother and then to be able to take care of them according to your needs.
If you have a lot of wealth, take care of people as much as you're able. If you have a very little bit amount of wealth and possessions, do what you can. And that's also really important about the proportion. Are you supposed to help people in proportion to what you have?
So I guess when you look at the Old Testament discussion on tithing 10%, well that's just kind of a baseline really. If you're able to give more, we're obligated morally to give more. And I think that's very much demonstrable in the New Testament to give generously to others. Well, this concept of the generous eye is found also in Cirax.
So remember this quote I gave to you earlier. It says that Tobit's wisdom echoes the wisdom literature and actually device versa. Like one illuminates the other. I think that's very clear.
But Cirax 14 verse 8 and following says evil is the man with a grudging eye. He averts his face in disregards people. A greedy man's eye is not satisfied with the portion and mean injustice with his soul. A stingy man's eye begrudges bread and is lacking at his table.
That's so interesting here. A greedy man's eye is not satisfied with a portion and mean injustice with his soul. So Cirax is saying very similar to what Tobit is saying. Like you can't your eye when you see wealth and you see possessions and you want to accumulate more your eye can be generous or can be stingy.
What this really is echoing here is the biblical tradition of one of the aspects of the threefold cincuba sense. It's found in 1st John chapter 216. I mentioned this many times in Bible studies because it comes up all the time. All sin is really rooted in this threefold temptation.
1st John 2 talks about how it's the less of the flesh, the less of the eye. That's important and then the pride of life. So the less of the flesh is really the disordered desires of the flesh bodily appetites. And so you have ordered appetites and you have disordered appetites.
The disordered appetites, the lust of the flesh is sinful. And then you have the disordered desires or lust of the eyes. That is this insatiable appetite to acquire and to possess more than you really need and not to help other people. That's why it's called the lust of the eye because you see materialism and it's called materialism consumers.
You see material wealth in possessions. You want to have more and more and more. This is what Cirax and Tobit in other places is talking about is the greedy eye. It's referring to the lust of the eyes that we all deal with to some degree.
And then there's the third one is the pride of life. We all suffer from the triple cincuba sense. Less of the flesh, less of the eyes, the pride of life. What we're talking about here is the second one.
This propensity to desire and to possess more than we really need. And so alms giving is actually the antidote. As a matter of fact, prayer fasting and alms giving is the antidote for the triple cincuba sense. The alms giving specifically for our conversation is the antidote for the lust of the eyes.
So if you want to fight against the temptation to have more and more and more and more, you want to give away as much as you're able to within reason, right? With wisdom to be, have an ordered attachment to really don't want to have an attachment at all to material things. You want to have an ordered relationship of material things. That's really important here.
So this whole concept of having a good eye as opposed to an evil eye references. The lust of the eyes part of the triple cincuba sense. I hope that makes sense. But here's another connection for you, which is in Matthew 6, Jesus is alluding to, I would argue, you can't really prove it.
Maybe there's some scholarly articles out there that make this connection that I'm unaware of. But Matthew in chapter 6 discusses the Sermon on the Mount Jesus goes in chapter 6 in two discussion on wealth. And so the whole context here is about treasure and money. And so when he's talking in specifically verse 22, he says something that's really weird for a lot of people who don't know the biblical background to the discussion of the lust of the eyes and the importance that you should have of a good eye, a generous eye towards other, which is giving them any excess wealth or really from your surplus that you may have.
So Jesus says this in Matthew 6, 22, the eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light is in you, if then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness?
So Jesus is talking about is the left of the eyes. Your eye must be sound, the end will be full of light. The whole context here is about laying up treasures. Let me just back up the verse 19.
Jesus says do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust consume and where the earth is breaking and steel. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust consume and where the earth is not breaking and steel. For where treasure is, there is your heart also. That's almost exactly what Tobit just said to his son.
Remember he says lay up for yourself good treasures against the day of necessity. I think you could say that's heaven, that's our, at least the afterlife, right? It's judgment. So Tobit is talking about laying up good treasures for yourself by what?
By giving alms and storing up treasures in heaven, day of necessity. And that's what Jesus is saying as well in the Sermon on the Mount. So I think it's, it's indubitable to me. It's indubitable to me that Jesus has the Jewish tradition of alms giving at mind, in his mind right now teaching on this, at the Sermon on Mount.
But specifically the book of Tobit, there are just too many connections here. So this is what's going on about alms giving and the language in scripture old and new about having a generous eye towards other people. And it makes sense, right? Because if you have a generous eye and you're giving generously to other people, then your eye is full of light, right?
Because if you ever experience this, the more stuff that you have, the heavier you feel, the more weighed down and burdened by stuff you feel. And when you give that stuff away, then you feel lighter, right? You feel less burdened and you feel like just, things are just easier for you because you don't have that junk all over your, or all around your house and weighing on your soul and your mind. And then the rest of your body feels good, so I'm going to get off my little preaching soapbox here.
I think you get the points. What Jesus is talking about is the less attached to your material goods, the rest of your life will be better. If your eye is sound and full of light, the rest of your body will as well, because you're not attached to the stuff and to wealth into possessions. All right, that's what I wanted to share with you.
I think that's really, really great and fun to keep in mind. So just give generously to other people. You're going to conquer the less of the eyes within your own soul, and you will be filled with light. That's the big takeaway point.
Oh, there's one more takeaway point, which is that alms giving or charitable giving is seen as a sacrificial offering, which purifies sin. That's really beautiful as well. And it's also echoing CIRAC, chapter three, verse 30 this time. CIRAC says, water extinguishes a blazing fire.
So alms giving atones for sin. That's interesting. There's a parallelism going on here. The blazing fire is equated to sin.
And just as water extinguishes that blazing fire, if you want to atone for sin, give alms. And that's in connection with what we were talking about earlier, which is the sin that we're speaking of is the less of the eyes. And alms giving is the antidote, and it purifies the less of the eyes. And it seems just as a sacrifice here as well, as sacrifice for forgiveness to sins.
That is dynamite. That's verse 11 and until I'm referring to here. 10 and 11 excuse me, charity delivers from death. And verse 11, who practices charity is an excellent offering in the presence of the most high.
So that's a big takeaway point here, I think, for this lesson. There's a few more things, high points. I'm excited to talk about in this lesson with you that this one here, connecting generosity, alms giving with the less of the eyes, and with Jesus' teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, laying at treasures in heaven. It's all connected here.
And it's this glorious tapestry of moral teaching of scripture. It's dynamite. All right, let's move on here. Let's kind of quickly go over some of these other aspects of his exhortations.
The next one being in verse 12, marrying, abstaining from sexual immorality, and marrying within the tribe. All right, we talked about this before in previous lessons, and in other Bible studies Israel had a huge problem with intermarrying the pagans. And it wasn't an interracial issue, it was an interreligious issue, issue, because when you marry much of the pagans, you're going to begin to worship their gods, and you're going to forget the Lord your God, the opposite of the car is to forget, right? So it is you're going to forget the covenant that you have with God, and you're going to commit all kinds of atrocities and abominations, and that's what Israel did all the time, even after they came home from exile, and that's the conversation in Ezra and Nehemiah at another time.
So what he's saying to his son is, look, marry within the tribe, keep away from immorality, don't marry a foreign woman. And that's, again, the problem that Israel had. People also go on to say, don't be prideful, work really hard, give other workers, they're just wages, that's one of the sins that cries out to heaven, by the way, is defrauding others other just wages. He will mention what we call today, the golden rule in verse 15.
It says, let's see here. What you hate do not do to anyone, that's what I would call, that's the golden rule, right? Do unto others, as they would do unto you, that's certainly an echo here in his exhortations to his son. He will go on to say, don't drink to excess.
He doesn't say don't drink, I always like to point that out. But don't drink to excess, right? Again, you have to, you can't have a disordered attachment to, that drinking would be the last of the flesh, by the way, is a disordered attachment to a bodily creature comfort. So there's a, some more on that point.
And then finally, seek wisdom. And all of these things seek wisdom. And so let me read for you verse 18 and following. Seek advice from every wise man and do not despise any useful counsel.
Bless the Lord God on every occasion, ask him that your ways may be made straight, and that all your paths and plans may prosper. For none of the nations has understanding, but the Lord himself gives all good things, and according to his will, he humbles whomever he wishes. So my son, remember my commands and do not let them be blotted out of your mind. And to this last point here is seek wisdom.
Seek wisdom from God. I've given you a bunch of advice here about alms giving, about immorality, about taking care of other people who may work for you, probably all this stuff, right? So remember what I told you and seek wisdom from God, as well as otherwise men to give you counsel. So Tobit's pretty rockin' awesome, I would say, right?
He really, really gets it. And again, there's that irony where he's physically blind, but his soul's eyes, if you want to call them that, the eyes of his soul, really see 2020, if you want to use that analogy. Here's a little quote from St. Augustine on that very point.
He says, besides the eyes of the flesh, there is the inner eye. Tobit, while blinded in the eyes of his body was not without sight when he gave rules of life to his son and counseled him to follow the way of righteousness. These are the eyes of understanding, end quote. So St.
Augustine really got it right. Chapter four is him sharing his insights, Tobit, sharing his insights and his wisdom with his son Tobias, and although he is blind, he really is the only one to truly see. And since he's gonna send his son off to retrieve all of this great wealth, he needs to give instructions about what true wealth really means. Hey, this is Doc Neck.
Thank you so much for listening to this course sample. If you enjoyed it and want to listen to the entire lesson, please become a student over at www.scripshar.com where you can listen to this entire course, but also all the other courses that we have available in the S&T audio library where you can listen to them on demand, however, and whenever you want. So thank you so much. God bless you and keep studying your Bible.
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