Tobit 5:14–16

Tobit 5:14 — "A drachma a day, and those things necessary for you, as to my son"

Tobit's opening offer is generous by ancient Near Eastern standards. A drachma was a full day's standard wage for a laborer in the Greek-speaking Jewish world (cf. Matthew 20:2), and his addition of full provisions — "as to my son" — elevates this from a business transaction to something approaching kinship hospitality. Tobit, though blind and impoverished, gives what he has with an open hand. The phrase "as to my son" is theologically charged: Tobit is treating a stranger (whom he cannot see) with the dignity of a family member. This enacts the Torah's command to love the stranger (Deuteronomy 10:19) and anticipates the revelation that Raphael is, in a sense, already a member of a divine household far more exalted than Tobit can imagine.

The dramatic irony here is one of the most carefully constructed in all of deuterocanonical literature. An angel — a pure spirit who neither eats nor drinks (cf. Tobit 12:19, where Raphael later discloses this) — is being offered room, board, and a daily wage. The humor is reverent: God accommodates himself to human institutional forms in order to accomplish a hidden salvific purpose.

Tobit 5:15 — "If you both return safe and sound, I will add something to your wages"

The conditional bonus is a humanly prudent gesture — Tobit protects himself against loss should the journey fail, while also incentivizing diligent care. Yet the verse operates on another level: the "safe and sound" return is not merely a commercial condition but the very content of Tobit's prayer. He has already entrusted Tobias to God; now he encodes that hope into the contract itself. The wages promised are simultaneously earthly payment and an expression of a father's desperate hope for his son's life. The word "moreover" (Vulgate: addam aliquid) implies abundance — Tobit wishes to exceed strict justice with generosity. This mirrors the divine economy, in which God never repays in mere measure-for-measure but always adds something over and above (cf. Luke 6:38).

Tobit 5:16 — "Go with this man; but God, who dwells in heaven, will prosper your journey. May his angel go with you"

This verse is the theological climax of the cluster. The double benediction — one from Tobit to Tobias, framed around divine and angelic accompaniment — is structurally and spiritually resonant. The phrase "God, who dwells in heaven" (Deus qui in caelo habitat) is a solemn invocation characteristic of Jewish prayer language, evoking divine transcendence precisely at the moment God is about to act with intimate immanence through Raphael. Tobit prays that God's angel will travel with Tobias, unaware that Raphael — whose name means "God heals" — is standing directly in front of him.

The typological depth is extraordinary. A father blesses a son departing into an unknown journey; the blessing is both sincere human prayer and, unbeknownst to Tobit, already answered. The angel is not coming — he is here. The pattern anticipates the entire economy of the Incarnation: God does not remain distant while humans pray for help; he inserts himself into the human journey, sometimes unrecognized, always operative.

Catholic tradition reads the figure of Raphael in Tobit as one of Scripture's most theologically rich angelic appearances, and these verses stand at the hinge of the narrative's entire angelology. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 336) teaches that "from its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession," and Raphael's disguised presence with Tobias is the paradigmatic biblical illustration of this truth — not as sentimental metaphor but as literal narrative.

The Church Fathers meditated deeply on this passage. St. Augustine (City of God, XV) and St. Gregory the Great (Moralia in Job) both understood angelic missions in Scripture as revelations of the permanent solicitude of God for his people mediated through his heavenly court. Raphael's disguise is not deception in a morally culpable sense but divine condescensio — God stooping to meet human weakness, a pattern the Fathers saw fulfilled ultimately in the Incarnation.

The negotiation of wages also carries sacramental resonance. The Council of Trent's emphasis on the legitimacy of material exchange for spiritual service (in the context of refuting simony) finds its healthy counterpoint here: Tobit pays for legitimate human accompaniment, not for the divine grace embedded within it. Raphael refuses the wages at the end of the book (Tobit 12:15), revealing that grace operates beyond all economic categories, yet without despising the human transaction through which it was clothed.

St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I, q. 113) teaches that God assigns guardian angels to individuals, and the specific mission of Raphael — sent by God, not hired by Tobit — exemplifies that divine prevenience: Tobit thinks he is hiring a guide, but God had already dispatched one.

Contemporary Catholics often reduce angelic ministry to a vague spiritual comfort — a "guardian angel" reduced to a bumper-sticker sentiment. Tobit 5:14–16 subverts this sentimentality with something far more demanding and consoling: God's angelic care is specific, purposeful, and already at work before we have finished praying. Tobit prays for an angel to accompany his son, and the angel is already there.

For Catholics today, this passage is a call to take seriously the Church's teaching on guardian angels — not as devotional decoration, but as a live theological conviction affecting how we send loved ones into danger, illness, or uncertainty. Parents who watch children leave home, spouses who entrust partners to surgery or travel, priests who commission parishioners to difficult apostolates — all of them stand in Tobit's place, praying what seems like a hope against hope.

Practically: retrieve the morning offering of children and family members to their guardian angels. Pray the Angele Dei not perfunctorily but with Tobit's urgency. Trust that when you have prayed and entrusted, and the person walks out the door, the angel is already at their side — not as your achievement, but as God's prior gift.