Tobias 2

¹But after these things, when there was a festival day of our Lord, and a good dinner was made in Tobias' house,

²he said to his son: Go, and bring some of our tribe that fear God, to make merry with us.

³And when he had gone, returning he told him, that one of the children of Israel lay slain in the street. And he forthwith leaping up from his place at the table, leaving his dinner, came fasting to the body:

⁴and taking it up carried it to his house secretly, that when the sun should be down, he might warily bury him.

⁵And when he had hid the body, he eat bread with mourning & trembling.

⁶remembering that word which our Lord said by Amos the Prophet: Your festival days shall be turned into lamentation & mourning.

⁷But when the sun was down, he went and buried him.

⁸And all his neighbours rebuked him, saying: Even now thou wast commanded to be slain because of this matter, and thou didst scarce escape the commandment of death, and doest thou bury the dead again?

⁹But Tobias more fearing God than the king, in haste took the bodies of them that were slain, and hid them in his house, & at midnight buried them.

¹⁰And it happened that on a certain day, being wearied with burying, coming into his house he had cast himself down by the wall, and slept,

¹¹and as he was sleeping, hot dung out of the swallows' nest fell upon his eyes, and he was made blind.

¹²And this tentation therefore our Lord permitted to chance unto him, that an example might be given to posterity of his patience, as also of holy Job.

¹³For whereas he feared God always from his infancy, and kept his commandments, he grudged not against God for that the plague of blindness had chanced to him,

¹⁴but continued immovable in the fear of God, giving thanks to God all the days of his life.

¹⁵For as the kings insulted against blessed Job, so his parents and cousins derided his life, saying:

¹⁶Where is thy hope, for the which thou didest bestow alms & burials?

¹⁷But Tobias rebuked them, saying: Speak not so:

¹⁸because we are the children of holy ones, and look for that life, which God will give to them, that never change their faith from him.

¹⁹But Anna his wife went daily to weaving work, and she brought the gains of her handy labour, which she could get.

²⁰Whereby it came to pass, that she receiving a kid of goats had brought it home:

²¹the voice whereof bleating when her husband had heard, he said: Take heed, lest perhaps it be stolen, restore ye it to his owners, because it is not lawful for us either to eat any thing of theft or to touch it.

²²To these words his wife being angry answered: Thy hope is become vain manifestly, and thine alms now have appeared.

²³And with these, and other such like words she upbraided him.