Catholic Commentary
Seeking Wisdom, Blessing God, and Trusting in Divine Providence
18Ask counsel of every man who is wise, and don’t despise any counsel that is profitable.19Bless the Lord your God at all times, and ask of him that your ways may be made straight, and that all your paths and counsels may prosper; for every nation has no counsel; but the Lord himself gives all good things, and he humbles whom he will, as he will. And now, my child, remember my commandments, and let them not be blotted out of your mind.
Tobit 4:18–19 instructs Tobias to actively seek wisdom from wise people without pride, while recognizing that all true counsel ultimately depends on God's guidance and blessing. The passage emphasizes that human wisdom must be paired with continuous blessing of the Lord and submission to divine sovereignty, which alone guarantees prosperity in all ways.
Wisdom is not found by choosing between human counsel and divine trust—it's found by seeking both together, with humility as the bridge.
The phrase "he humbles whom he will, as he will" is deliberately sobering. It places divine sovereignty at the center of the discourse without resolving the tension between freedom and providence — it simply insists that God is not obligated to any human scheme, however prudent. This is the wisdom of a man who has suffered unjustly (Tobit's blindness), yet maintained faith.
The closing exhortation — "remember my commandments, and let them not be blotted out of your mind" — seals the discourse with the language of memory, so central to the Deuteronomic tradition. To remember the commandments is to internalize them, to let them become the lens through which all of life is perceived.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
Typologically, Tobit's instruction to his son on the eve of a dangerous journey prefigures the Church's ongoing catechetical mission: parents and teachers hand on wisdom not as mere information but as a way of walking before God. The "straight paths" Tobit invokes anticipate the "Way" (hodos) that Christ himself becomes (John 14:6), the definitive answer to every human search for right counsel.
Catholic tradition illuminates this passage at several levels.
First, the relationship between human prudence and divine providence here maps precisely onto what the Catechism teaches about the virtue of prudence: "Prudence is the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it" (CCC 1806). Tobit's counsel to seek wise advisors is not mere pragmatism; it is the exercise of a cardinal virtue that Catholic moral theology regards as the auriga virtutum — the charioteer of all the virtues. To despise good counsel is, in this framework, a failure of prudence and therefore a moral failing.
Second, the insistence on blessing God "at all times" resonates with the Church's theology of prayer as continuous orientation rather than isolated acts. St. John Chrysostom, commenting on analogous Pauline passages, taught that constant prayer does not mean unceasing vocal prayer but an unceasing disposition of the heart toward God — precisely what Tobit models in his own life of prayer throughout the book (cf. Tob. 3:1–6; 13:1–18). The Catechism echoes this: "It is always possible to pray… prayer is a vital necessity" (CCC 2744).
Third, the statement that God "humbles whom he will" connects to the Catholic doctrine of divine sovereignty and the theology of suffering. Pope St. John Paul II's Salvifici Doloris (1984) reflects deeply on redemptive suffering, and Tobit — a just man afflicted without apparent cause — is a deuterocanonical prototype of this mystery. His counsel does not emerge from comfortable success but from hard-won wisdom in suffering, giving it a spiritual authority beyond mere proverbial instruction.
Finally, St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae (II-II, q. 49, a. 3), lists docilitas — the readiness to be taught — as an integral part of prudence. Verse 18's command not to despise profitable counsel is a direct expression of this Thomistic virtue.
Contemporary Catholic life is saturated with noise: algorithmic recommendations, social-media consensus, and the cult of individual autonomy. Against this backdrop, Tobit's two-verse counsel is a sharp corrective. Verse 18 calls Catholics to the countercultural practice of actually seeking wise advisors — a spiritual director, a trusted confessor, a wise elder in the faith — and, crucially, to receive their counsel with humility rather than filtering it through what we already want to hear. The warning not to "despise profitable counsel" is aimed squarely at the pride that has already decided before asking.
Verse 19 confronts the anxiety culture that afflicts even devout Catholics. The instruction to bless God "at all times" — not only when prayers are answered as hoped — is a discipline of grateful trust that cuts against treating God as a vending machine for desired outcomes. A practical application: adopt the Lauds and Vespers of the Liturgy of the Hours as daily bookends to work, practicing the blessing of God at the start and close of each day's "paths and counsels." This is not pietism but the concrete spiritual architecture that Tobit is commending — a life framed by praise, not merely punctuated by petition.
Commentary
Tobit 4:18 — "Ask counsel of every man who is wise, and don't despise any counsel that is profitable."
This verse belongs to the classical tradition of sapiential instruction found throughout the deuterocanonical and Wisdom literature. Tobit has been delivering a sustained moral catechesis to Tobias (vv. 3–17), covering almsgiving, justice, chastity, and right conduct. Now, as that instruction reaches its climax, he turns to the source of wise living: the counsel of the wise and the guidance of God.
The imperative "ask counsel" (Greek: zetei boulên) is pointed and practical. Tobit is not urging passive openness but an active, deliberate seeking-out of wisdom wherever it may be found. The phrase "every man who is wise" is notably inclusive — wisdom is not the monopoly of the family or the tribe; it may reside in unexpected persons. The second clause, "don't despise any counsel that is profitable," reinforces this by warning against the pride that dismisses good advice because of the lowly station of its source. This double structure — seek actively, receive humbly — mirrors the two-sided posture that the entire book of Tobit commends: initiative paired with receptivity.
Crucially, this counsel is immediately followed — without pause — by verse 19's turning to God. The juxtaposition is deliberate: human wisdom is real and must be sought, but it is subordinate to and dependent upon divine wisdom. Tobit does not oppose human counsel and divine guidance; he sequences them, with the divine as the encompassing frame.
Tobit 4:19 — "Bless the Lord your God at all times…"
The opening imperative, "Bless the Lord your God at all times" (en panti kairô), is comprehensive. Not merely in moments of success or liturgical assembly, but in every season — including the darkness of Tobit's own blindness and exile, the very context in which these words are spoken. The blessing of God is thus an act of sovereign gratitude that transcends circumstance, a discipline of orientation toward the good God regardless of felt experience.
"Ask of him that your ways may be made straight" recalls the image of the straight path (Hebrew yashar) so central to the Psalms and Proverbs — a path that does not meander into folly or wickedness but runs true to its divine goal. The request that "all your paths and counsels may prosper" connects the human counsel of v. 18 to its divine end: even the best human advice needs God's blessing to bear fruit.
The theological kernel of the verse follows: "for every nation has no counsel; but the Lord himself gives all good things." The Greek here stresses that apart from God, the counsel of nations — however sophisticated — is ultimately empty. This is not anti-intellectualism; it is theological realism. All creaturely wisdom is derivative; God alone is its source and guarantor.