Book of Tobit
The
Book of Tobit is a scripture that is part of the
Roman Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox biblical canon but is treated by Protestants as
Apocrypha. It tells the story of a man from
Nineveh named Tobiah who is sent by his blind and deathly ill father
Tobit to collect a sum of money that the latter had deposited some time previously in the far off land of
Media. Meanwhile, there is a despondent young woman in Media by the name of
Sarah who has lost seven husbands to the
demon Asmodeus, each of these husbands being killed on the night that they were wed to Sarah.
God sends the angel
Raphael, disguised as a human, to aid and protect Tobiah and Sarah. Under the guidance of Raphael, Tobiah makes the journey to Media, meets and marries Sarah, defeats Asmodeus, and returns safely to Nineveh with his father's money and a cure for his father's blindness. After Raphael reveals his true identity and returns to heaven, Tobit sings a hymn of praise, and tells his son to leave Nineveh before God destroys it. After burying his father, Tobiah returns to Media with his family, where he later learns that the destruction of Nineveh took place as his father predicted.