Kingdom Kutz MediaQuestions
What Is the Book of Tobit About?
The story of Tobit, Sarah, seven dead husbands, a demon, and the archangel Raphael, and why most Protestant Bibles leave it out.
The Book of Tobit tells the story of a blind, exiled Israelite named Tobit and a woman named Sarah, whose seven husbands were each killed by the demon Asmodeus on their wedding night. God sends the archangel Raphael, disguised as a traveler, to heal Tobit's blindness and free Sarah from the demon through Tobit's son Tobias. It is part of the Apocrypha, accepted as Scripture by Catholic and Orthodox Bibles but excluded from most Protestant ones.
Ask most Christians what the Bible says about a demon killing seven husbands in a row, and you will get a blank stare. It is one of the strangest, most specific stories connected to Scripture, and it is real, just not in the book most Protestants are holding.
Who Was Tobit?
Tobit was a devout, wealthy Israelite living among the Jewish exiles deported to Nineveh after the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC. Despite his faithfulness, he loses everything, going blind after bird droppings fall into his eyes while he sleeps in his courtyard. Broken and blind, Tobit prays for God to let him die.
Who Was Sarah, and What Killed Her Husbands?
Hundreds of miles away in Media, a young woman named Sarah is praying the same prayer. She has been married seven times, and on each wedding night, before the marriage could be consummated, a demon named Asmodeus killed the groom. Sarah is left publicly humiliated, grieving, and convinced God has abandoned her.
Scripture makes a promise elsewhere that this story ends up acting out in full:
For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.Psalm 91:11 (KJV)
How Does the Archangel Raphael Fix Both Problems?
God hears both prayers on the same day and sends the archangel Raphael, disguised as a traveling relative, to answer them together. Raphael accompanies Tobit's son Tobias on a journey to collect money Tobit had left in Media years earlier, the same city where Sarah lives.
Along the way, a massive fish attacks Tobias in the Tigris River. Raphael instructs him to keep its heart, liver, and gall bladder, unusual advice that turns out to be the key to everything. Tobias marries Sarah, and on their wedding night, he burns the fish's heart and liver as instructed. The smell drives Asmodeus out of the room and, the story says, all the way to Egypt, where Raphael binds him. Sarah survives her wedding night for the first time in seven tries.
Kingdom Kutz Media told the full version of Sarah's story in Seven Husbands Killed by a Demon | The Haunting Story of Sarah in Tobit, walking through the entire account in detail.
Back in Nineveh, Tobias rubs the fish's gall into his father's eyes, and Tobit's sight is restored. Raphael then reveals his true identity and returns to heaven, having answered two impossible prayers with a single journey.
Why Isn't Tobit in Most Protestant Bibles?
Tobit belongs to a group of books called the Apocrypha, texts written in the roughly 400 years between the Old and New Testaments. Catholic and Orthodox Bibles include it as fully canonical Scripture. Most Protestant Bibles leave it out, and GotQuestions.org identifies a few specific reasons why: Tobit 1:15 misidentifies Sennacherib as the son of Shalmaneser rather than Sargon II, and Tobit 12:9 teaches that almsgiving itself delivers from death, a claim that sits uneasily next to Paul's statement in Galatians that salvation comes by faith, not works.
Whether or not it belongs in the canon, the story itself has stayed genuinely beloved for over two thousand years, and the fuller text is available through the USCCB's Bible portal for anyone who wants to read the whole account firsthand.
🙏 Pray With Us
Lord, for anyone who feels like Tobit or Sarah right now, blind, humiliated, or convinced their prayers have gone unheard, send Your own kind of rescue. You were never absent from either of their stories, and You are not absent from ours.
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