Tobit 10:10–12

Tobit 10:10 — The Dowry as Covenant Act Raguel's gift is not merely generous; it is juridically significant. In the ancient Near East (and reflected in Israelite custom codified in texts like Sirach 25:22 and the Mosaic legislation on inheritance), a father's bestowal of a daughter included a substantial dowry that secured her dignity and provided for her future household. Raguel gives "half his goods" — servants, cattle, and money — in a public, witnessed act that mirrors the structure of covenant itself: goods are exchanged, obligations are established, and the parties are permanently bound. The specific enumeration (servants, cattle, money) underscores that this is a total gift: animate life, productive resources, and liquid wealth. Raguel holds nothing back, which foreshadows the theological register that will follow. The act also signals that Sarah is not a burden being transferred but a beloved daughter being launched — a crucial distinction given the shadow of her seven previous husbands (Tob 3:7–8) that had hung over her life.

Tobit 10:11 — The Patriarchal Blessing Raguel's blessing is phrased with deliberate solemnity: "The God of heaven will prosper you." The title "God of heaven" (Elohei hashamayim in Hebrew idiom) carries enormous weight in post-exilic Jewish literature (cf. Ezra 1:2; Neh 1:4; Dan 2:18) — it is the universal sovereign, the God who transcends any single nation's territory, who blesses these two Israelites living in the Diaspora. This is not a tribal deity but the Creator God. The phrase "before I die" is not morbid; it echoes the patriarchal blessings of Genesis (27:4; 48:21), where Isaac and Jacob bless their children with an awareness that the blessing must pass from one generation to the next before death. Raguel consciously places himself in that lineage of blessing-bearers, understanding his fatherly authority as a stewardship he now exercises for the last time over Sarah. The blessing is both a prayer and a prophetic act: he speaks what he trusts God will accomplish.

Tobit 10:12 — The Reconfiguration of Family Raguel's address to Sarah is the moral and spiritual heart of the passage. His command — "Honor your father-in-law and your mother-in-law; they are now your parents" — is a direct extension of the Fourth Commandment (Ex 20:12; Deut 5:16) into the new domestic reality that marriage creates. He does not ask Sarah to forget him; he asks her to expand her heart. The word "now" (nyn in the Greek Septuagint) signals a decisive transition: a new family has come into being. The request for "a good report" (Greek: akoēn agathēn) recalls the honor-and-shame dynamics of ancient Mediterranean society, but also points toward virtue: a life visibly shaped by fidelity, respect, and love. Raguel's final kiss — simple, wordless — is the seal on everything he has said. It is the gesture of a father who has done everything he can and now releases his child to God and to her husband.

Catholic tradition reads this passage at multiple levels, all of them illuminating the Church's vision of marriage and family.

Marriage as a New Creation of Family. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the spouses, in virtue of the sacrament, receive from the Holy Spirit the grace to build up the Church by their conjugal and family life" (CCC §1641). Raguel's words to Sarah enact this theologically: by marrying Tobiah, she has entered a new family without ceasing to belong to her old one. This is precisely the theology of Genesis 2:24 — "a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife" — which Jesus quotes in Matthew 19:5 and which the Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes (§48) calls a "covenant" that enlarges, not severs, the web of human love.

The Transmission of Blessing. The Church Fathers recognized in scenes like Raguel's blessing an echo of the priestly and patriarchal office. St. John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on Marriage, insists that parents have a sacred duty to bless their children at the moment of marriage, committing them to God's providence. Raguel's blessing is not sentimental but sacramental in structure: he names God, he speaks over the couple, he entrusts them to divine care.

Dowry and the Dignity of the Person. Pope John Paul II's Familiaris Consortio (§11) emphasizes that marriage must never reduce the person to an object. Raguel's lavish dowry — given with Sarah, not for her — enacts this: Sarah is given in love, and her material security is guaranteed by a father who refuses to send her away empty-handed. This prefigures the Church's own concern for the material and spiritual dowry of the faithful: God sends no one into the covenant empty-handed.

For Catholic families today, Raguel's farewell is a mirror for two often-neglected pastoral moments: the wedding itself, and the in-law relationship that follows.

His blessing reminds parents that their role at a child's wedding is not passive attendance but active spiritual commissioning. Parents who pray openly over their children at the time of marriage — invoking, as Raguel does, the "God of heaven" — are participating in an ancient and holy tradition. Couples who feel their parents' blessing have a tangible spiritual resource for the hard seasons of marriage.

Raguel's charge to Sarah to "honor your father-in-law and your mother-in-law" speaks directly to a perennial source of family friction. Catholic social teaching, rooted in the Fourth Commandment's logic, recognizes that the in-law relationship is not accidental but covenantal. The new family does not replace the old; it absorbs it. Concretely, this means cultivating habits of respect, communication, and generosity toward one's spouse's family — treating them as parents, not strangers. Couples might examine whether they allow resentment or distance to calcify in those relationships, and what small acts of honor they could offer this week.