Catholic Commentary
Tobit and Tobias Bear Witness to God's Works
21Then they rose up, and saw him no more.22They confessed the great and wonderful works of God, and how the angel of the Lord had appeared to them.
Tobit 12:21–22 describes the angel Raphael's departure and Tobit and Tobias's response of public testimony. After the angel vanishes, the two men rise and proclaim God's great and wonderful works and how the angel had appeared to them, integrating their suffering into Israel's narrative of divine providence through liturgical confession.
When divine guidance vanishes, the real work begins: rising to tell what you have seen.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
Typologically, Raphael's mission prefigures the Incarnation in a striking way: as Raphael himself declared, "I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand and serve before the Glory of the Lord" (12:15), yet he walked with Tobias in apparent human form, ate and drank (or seemed to), guided, protected, and healed — all without the travelers knowing the full truth until the appointed moment of revelation. The Church Fathers saw in this hiddenness and revelation a pattern fulfilled in Christ, who walked with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, was known to them in the breaking of bread, and then "vanished from their sight" (Luke 24:31). The rising of Tobit and Tobias further carries a baptismal and resurrectional resonance in the patristic reading: they rise from the ground renewed, their eyes — Tobit's literally, Tobias's spiritually — fully open to the works of God.
Catholic tradition finds in these two verses a rich convergence of teaching on angels, witness, and doxology.
On the ministry of angels, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that angels are "mighty ones who do his word" (CCC 329), sent as "ministering spirits in the service of salvation" (CCC 331, citing Heb 1:14). Raphael's sudden departure illustrates what the Catechism affirms about angelic mission: angels "do not tarry" once their task is complete, because their purpose is entirely ordered to God's glory and human salvation, not to their own honor. St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae (I, q. 113), reflects on guardian angels and notes that their assistance, though hidden, is real and efficacious — precisely the lesson Tobit and Tobias must now integrate.
On doxological witness, the Fathers read verse 22 as a paradigm of the Christian martyria — testimony born from encounter with the living God. St. John Chrysostom, in his homilies on thanksgiving, insists that receiving God's grace creates an obligation to proclaim it: silence in the face of divine mercy is a form of ingratitude. Origen similarly reads the exomologēsis of Tobit and Tobias as the soul's proper response to divine illumination.
On the deuterocanonical witness, the Council of Trent (Session IV, 1546) and later the Second Vatican Council (Dei Verbum 11) affirm Tobit as canonical Scripture, and the Church has drawn upon this book's angelology to enrich its teaching on providence and the communion of the spiritual and material realms.
On the communal dimension of testimony, this verse anticipates the ecclesiological insight of Lumen Gentium 12: the sensus fidei of the whole People of God involves receiving, living, and transmitting the faith — here embodied by two generations giving witness together.
For Catholics today, these two verses issue a concrete and searching challenge: when God's providence becomes clear in retrospect — after the illness, the estrangement, the financial ruin, the answered prayer — do we rise and bear witness, or do we quietly pocket the grace and move on?
Tobit and Tobias model a response in two movements. First, they rise: they refuse to remain in a posture of passive amazement. Grace received demands engagement, not prolonged stupor. Second, they confess publicly — not merely in private prayer but as testimony others can hear. This is the logic of the sacrament of Confirmation, which seals Catholics as witnesses, and it is the logic of the New Evangelization (Evangelii Gaudium 120–121), which calls every baptized person to share the "joy of the Gospel" arising from personal encounter with Christ.
Practically, Catholics might ask: What are the "great and wonderful works of God" in my own life that I have never articulated — to my children, my community, a friend in doubt? The book of Tobit suggests that testimony is not the preserve of mystics; it belongs to ordinary people who have simply paid attention to how God has guided them through the hidden ministry of grace.
Commentary
Tobit 12:21 — "Then they rose up, and saw him no more."
The verb "rose up" (Greek: anestēsan) is deceptively simple. Tobit and Tobias had fallen on their faces in awe at Raphael's disclosure of his identity (12:16). Their rising is therefore not merely a physical movement but a liturgical gesture: they complete the act of prostration begun in trembling reverence, and return to standing — the posture of resurrection, of readiness to act and speak in the world. The sudden disappearance of Raphael — "saw him no more" — echoes a recurring biblical pattern in which divine messengers vanish once their mission is accomplished (cf. Judges 13:20–21, where the angel of the Lord ascends in the flame of the altar and is seen no more by Manoah and his wife). The abruptness of the departure is theologically significant: the angel does not linger for human admiration or gratitude; his withdrawal is itself part of the lesson, redirecting their gaze from the mediator to the God who sent him. The Greek kai ouketi eiden auton ("and no longer did they see him") carries a note of finality that underscores the completeness of Raphael's mission. Everything that needed to be done — the healing of Tobit's blindness, the deliverance of Sarah, the safe return of Tobias — has been accomplished. Providence, which had seemed absent throughout the suffering of both families, is now fully revealed as having been operative all along.
Tobit 12:22 — "They confessed the great and wonderful works of God, and how the angel of the Lord had appeared to them."
The word "confessed" translates the Greek exomologeō, a term rich in both Old Testament and New Testament liturgical usage, meaning at once to acknowledge, to praise, and to give public testimony. In the Septuagint tradition, this word is used for the great hymns of thanksgiving offered to God (cf. Psalm 136/135; Sirach 51:1). The "great and wonderful works of God" (ta megaleia kai ta thaumasia autou) deliberately echo the language of the mirabilia Dei — the mighty acts of salvation — that form the backbone of Israel's praise throughout the Psalms and the historical books. Tobit and Tobias do not keep their experience private. The phrasing "appeared to them" (ōphthē autois) uses the same verb employed for divine and angelic appearances throughout Scripture, linking this epiphany to the great theophanies of Israel's history. Their testimony is thus an act of worship, witness, and integration: they receive the meaning of everything that has happened and proclaim it. The double subject — both father and son bearing witness together — anticipates the ecclesial dimension of Christian witness: faith is transmitted across generations, and testimony is characteristically communal. In the broader literary structure of Tobit, this verse completes the frame: the book began with Tobit's faithful but suffering piety (ch. 1–3) and ends with his joyful, vindicated proclamation (ch. 13–14), of which this verse is the immediate liturgical hinge.