Tobit 6:15–17

Tobit 6:15 — The Command Remembered, the Fear Addressed

Raphael opens not with new instructions but with a recall to covenant obligation: "Don't you remember the words which your father commanded you, that you should take a wife of your own kindred?" This appeal to Tobit Senior's command functions on multiple levels. Literally, it situates the marriage within the framework of endogamy commanded in the Torah (cf. Num 36:6–9), the practice of marrying within one's tribe to preserve inheritance and identity among the dispersed people of Israel. But Raphael's reminder carries a pastoral warmth — he reframes the terrifying prospect of marrying the seven-times-widowed Sarah not as a reckless adventure but as the fulfillment of a father's already-sanctioned will.

The angel's address "brother" (Greek: adelphe) is theologically loaded. Raphael, traveling incognito as the kinsman Azariah, speaks as an intimate companion. The word anticipates the nuptial language of the Septuagint's Song of Songs and of Tobias's own prayer in chapter 8 ("sister"), casting the marriage in terms of covenantal friendship, not merely biological alliance. The direct imperative — "Don't worry about the demon" — is a pastoral absolution of fear. The demon Asmodeus has killed seven men, a number echoing both totality and demonic persistence in Jewish tradition. Raphael does not minimize the danger but redirects Tobias's gaze from the enemy to the promise: "for this night she will be given you as wife."

Tobit 6:16 — The Medicinal Smoke: Created Means as Instruments of Grace

The instruction to burn the heart and liver of the fish upon incense ashes is strikingly concrete and sacramental in structure. The fish (caught at Raphael's own prompting in 6:2–4) becomes the material means through which spiritual victory is accomplished. The smoke (kapnos) deliberately evokes the language of liturgical incense — the same medium through which Israel's prayers ascended to God (cf. Ps 141:2; Rev 8:4). By combining the fish's organs with incense ashes, Tobias enacts a form of exorcistic ritual that joins the natural order (the fish's properties) with the sacred order (incense and prayer).

The Church Fathers noted the typological richness here. Origen (Homilies on Numbers) saw the use of created instruments for spiritual ends as a model for the Church's sacramental economy — God does not bypass creation but works through it. The fish, caught from the river Tigris, has in patristic tradition sometimes been read as a figure of Christ (the famous ichthys symbolism), whose heart (love) and liver (the seat of life in ancient anatomy) become the weapons of spiritual combat. The smoke drives Asmodeus "to the uttermost parts of Egypt," where Raphael will later bind him — a cosmic expulsion that foreshadows eschatological judgment.

Tobit 6:17 — Rise Together, Cry to God: Prayer as the Irreducible Foundation

After the physical remedy comes the essential act: "both of you rise up, and cry to God who is merciful." The verb "rise up" (anastēte) carries the force of a liturgical posture — standing in prayer was the normative ancient Jewish and Christian stance, especially on Sundays, the day of resurrection. That both Tobias and Sarah are instructed to rise together signals the communal, spousal character of the prayer. This is not private petition but the common cry of two souls entrusting their union to God.

The epithet "merciful" (eleos) is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew hesed, God's covenantal loving-kindness — the very attribute Tobit Senior invoked repeatedly in his own prayers. Raphael's climactic declaration — "she was prepared for you from the beginning" — introduces the passage's most theologically explosive claim: divine predestination of the marriage covenant. The Greek prohētoimasthē (she was prepared beforehand) points to an eternal decree, not a last-minute arrangement. Tobias will not merely survive the encounter with Asmodeus; he will save Sarah, reversing the pattern of her losses. The angel's final, almost tender conjecture — "I suppose that you will have children with her" — grounds the eschatological promise in the ordinary fruitfulness of conjugal love.

Typological and Spiritual Senses

In the fuller spiritual sense (the sensus plenior of Catholic interpretation), Tobias becomes a type of Christ, the Bridegroom who descends into a world held captive by demonic power to rescue his Bride (the Church/the soul) — not by force but by love, prayer, and the instruments of his own sacrifice. Sarah, afflicted through no fault of her own (3:14–15), figures the human soul imprisoned by sin and death, prepared from the beginning to be united to her Savior. Asmodeus, whose name derives from the Avestan Aēšma-daēva ("demon of wrath"), represents the disordered passions — especially lust — that destroy marriages and souls. The fish (Christ), the incense (prayer ascending to heaven), and the spoken word of the angel (divine revelation) together form an integrated economy of salvation.

Catholic tradition illuminates this passage at three distinct levels of theological depth.

1. The Sacramental Structure of Creation. The use of the fish's organs and incense anticipates the Catholic teaching that grace perfects and works through nature rather than abolishing it (cf. Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 109, a. 2; St. Thomas Aquinas). The Catechism affirms that sacraments are efficacious signs that use created things — water, oil, bread, wine — as instruments of divine power (CCC 1084). Raphael's instruction is an Old Testament foreshadowing of this sacramental logic: the material world is not spiritually neutral but capable of being ordered toward God's redemptive ends.

2. Marriage as Vocation Ordained by God from Eternity. Raphael's declaration that Sarah "was prepared for you from the beginning" resonates deeply with the Second Vatican Council's teaching in Gaudium et Spes §48: "The intimate partnership of life and love which constitutes the married state was established by the Creator and endowed by Him with its own proper laws." The Catechism teaches that Christian marriage is a vocation — a calling discerned and received, not merely chosen (CCC 1603). This passage is among the oldest biblical witnesses to the theology of marriage as providential calling, not contractual arrangement.

3. Spousal Prayer as the Foundation of the Christian Home. The command for both spouses to rise and pray together anticipates what the Catechism calls the family as "the domestic church" (ecclesia domestica, CCC 1666), and St. John Chrysostom's counsel that spouses who pray together cannot be separated by the devil. Pope Francis, in Amoris Laetitia §227–228, echoes Raphael's instruction when he urges couples to pray together, especially in moments of trial, as the most powerful defense against the fragmentation of family life.

4. The Role of Angels in Salvation History. Raphael's guidance exemplifies the Church's teaching on the ministry of angels as mediators of God's providential care (CCC 336). He does not replace Tobias's free choice or Sarah's suffering but accompanies, instructs, and intercedes — a model of how the heavenly host serves human salvation without overriding human freedom.

For contemporary Catholics, this passage offers a remarkably practical theology for engaged and married couples facing the "demons" of their own age — pornography, individualism, the cultural reduction of marriage to a contractual arrangement dissolving at will, and the deep-seated fear of vulnerability in committed love.

Raphael's instruction has three concrete applications. First, use the means God provides: the Church does not leave couples unarmed. The sacrament of Matrimony, regular confession, the Rosary prayed together, and Theology of the Body-informed formation are the contemporary equivalents of the fish's organs — real, material instruments of spiritual protection. Second, rise together and pray aloud: studies confirm that couples who pray together daily have dramatically lower divorce rates, but beyond statistics, shared prayer is itself an act of covenant renewal. Many couples find this the single most transformative and most resisted practice of married life — which is precisely why the angel commands it. Third, receive your spouse as a gift of Providence: "she was prepared for you from the beginning" is not a warrant for passivity in discernment, but once the covenant is made, it is a liberating truth — your spouse is not an accident of circumstance but a gift of the God who is merciful. This reframes every difficult season of marriage as a moment of grace rather than evidence of a mistake.