Tobit 7:12–15

Tobit 7:12 — "Take her to yourself from now on according to custom" Raguel's words mark the decisive moment of consent and transfer. The phrase "according to custom" (Greek: kata tēn krisin; literally "according to the judgment" or "according to the decree") signals that what follows is not improvised but governed by ancestral law and community norm. Raguel's appeal to Tobias as "her relative" is both genealogical and covenantal: kinship creates obligation, and in the theology of the Book of Tobit, the right ordering of marriage within the community of Israel is itself an act of fidelity to God. The invocation — "The merciful God will give all good success to you" — is striking in its placement before the formal giving. Raguel does not merely wish them well; he situates the entire marriage within the logic of divine mercy (eleos in Greek, rendering the Hebrew hesed, covenant-love). The marriage is thus framed as a work of God's loving-kindness, not human arrangement alone.

Tobit 7:13 — Calling Sarah, the taking of the hand, the giving "after the law of Moses" Three distinct ritual gestures occur in swift succession. First, Sarah is called — summoned, not dragged; her presence is active, not passive. Second, Raguel takes her by the hand — this physical gesture of taking and giving the bride's hand (the dextrarum iunctio) is one of the oldest and most enduring symbols in both Jewish and later Christian matrimonial ritual. The hand represents the whole person; the handing over of the hand is the handing over of the self. Third, she is given to Tobias "after the law of Moses" — kata ton nomon Mōuseōs — invoking not merely cultural practice but divine legislation. The Torah's vision of marriage (rooted in Genesis 2) grounds this moment. The blessing Raguel pronounces completes the act: the father does not merely permit the union but consecrates it with a spoken blessing, functioning here as a kind of priestly intermediary. The instruction to "lead her away to your father" indicates that the marriage, though contracted in Ecbatana, must be completed in the household of Tobit — underscoring the role of the broader family and community in marriage, not merely the two individuals.

Tobit 7:14 — Edna is called; the written contract is drawn up and sealed Edna, the mother, is brought in as witness — her presence completing the parental representation of the bride. The written contract (biblion) is of enormous significance. In Second Temple Judaism, a marriage document (ketubah) established the legal obligations of the husband toward the wife, including provisions for her protection and dignity. This is not a mere formality: the written, sealed document makes the covenant irrevocable and public. It protects Sarah. In Catholic reading, this document prefigures the inextricability of marriage: what is written and sealed before witnesses cannot be casually undone. The solemnity of the written contract also echoes the broader scriptural theology of covenant-as-document (the tablets of the Law, the scroll of the Torah) — the idea that binding commitments deserve written, permanent form.

Tobit 7:15 — "Then they began to eat" The communal meal that concludes the ceremony is not an afterthought. In ancient Near Eastern and Jewish culture, sharing a meal ratified a covenant (cf. Gen 26:30; 31:54; Ex 24:11). To eat together after the contract is sealed is to enter into communion — the covenant becomes embodied, shared in the act of nourishment. This meal prefigures, in the typological reading of the Church, the eschatological wedding banquet of the Lamb (Rev 19:9) and, more immediately for Catholics, the Eucharist as the meal that seals and renews the New Covenant. Marriage in Catholic theology is ordered toward communion — and that communion finds its earthly icon in the shared table.

Catholic tradition reads this passage as a luminous prototype of Christian sacramental marriage. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of 'the wedding-feast of the Lamb.' Scripture speaks throughout of marriage and its 'mystery,' its institution and the meaning God has given it" (CCC §1602). Tobit 7 stands at the heart of that scriptural witness.

Pope John Paul II's Familiaris Consortio (1981) teaches that Christian marriage is not merely a social contract but a "covenant of love" established before God and the community — precisely what Tobit 7 enacts in its three-layered structure: oral consent, physical gesture (dextrarum iunctio), and written document. The Council of Trent (Tametsi, 1563) itself, in mandating that marriage be contracted publicly, before a priest and witnesses, and recorded in writing, was retrieving a structure of permanence, publicity, and documentation that Tobit 7:14 already embodies millennia earlier.

St. Augustine, in De Bono Coniugali, identifies the three goods of marriage as proles (offspring), fides (fidelity), and sacramentum (indissoluble bond). All three are latent in this scene: the hope for children underlies the entire narrative arc of the book; fidelity is precisely what the kinship-marriage of Tobias and Sarah enacts against the disorder introduced by Asmodeus; and the sealed document bespeaks sacramental permanence. St. John Chrysostom, commenting on the sanctity of the bridal chamber in his homilies on marriage, emphasizes that God himself is the true celebrant of every true marriage — an insight mirrored in Raguel's invocation of "the merciful God" before, not after, the act of giving.

For Catholic couples preparing for marriage, Tobit 7:12–15 offers a strikingly concrete corrective to purely romantic or contractual views of matrimony. Notice what happens here: a father gives his daughter by the hand, invoking God's mercy before the union is sealed — not as a formality but as a theological statement that the marriage belongs, first and foremost, to God's providential design. The written contract protects Sarah's dignity and makes the commitment irrevocable. The shared meal enacts communion.

Contemporary Catholics can examine their own marriages — or preparations for marriage — against this structure: Is our covenant explicitly placed under divine mercy? Are we thinking of marriage as a public, ecclesial, permanent act (like the sealed document) rather than a private, revisable arrangement? Are we cultivating real communion — the shared table, daily life broken open for another? And for parents, Raguel models something beautiful: the father who does not simply hand a child over but blesses — who exercises paternal authority as priestly intercession. Family prayer before major life events is not sentiment; it is the continuation of Raguel's gesture.