Tobit 13

The first words of the song tell us everything about the man singing it. After chapters of darkness, Tobit's response to being healed is to bless the Lord rather than to celebrate himself. "Thou art great, O Lord, for ever, and thy kingdom is unto all ages." Notice what he reaches for first: he reaches past his own restored eyesight to the eternity and greatness of God. The man whose own life felt fragile and brief anchors his joy in a kingdom that lasts unto all ages.

Suffering, when it does its deepest work, teaches the heart to look up rather than to turn inward.

Here is the heartbeat of the whole hymn, in a single line: "For thou scourgest, and thou savest: thou leadest down to hell, and bringest up again." Tobit has lived both halves of that sentence. He has been led down into blindness and grief; he has been brought up again into light. And he refuses to split God into a god of the wounding and a god of the healing. It is one hand that does both, and "there is none that can escape thy hand."

For a sufferer this is either terror or comfort, and Tobit has decided it is comfort. The hand that struck him is the same hand that lifted him, and that hand is good.

Tobit gives the exile itself a purpose, and it is a startling one. The scattering among the Gentiles is not simply punishment to be endured; it is a mission. God has placed His people among nations "who know not him" precisely so that they may "declare his wonderful works, and make them know that there is no other almighty God besides him." The displaced people become witnesses. Their very presence in foreign lands, still worshipping the one God, becomes a sermon to the nations.

What looked like the worst thing that could happen to Israel is being turned, in Tobit's vision, into the way the whole world might come to hear of God.

Verse 5 holds the two truths of the song side by side without flinching from either. "He hath chastised us for our iniquities" - Tobit does not pretend the suffering was undeserved or random. "And he will save us for his own mercy" - and yet the deliverance, when it comes, will not be wages earned but mercy freely given. Notice the ground of the saving: not our improvement, not our worthiness, but "his own mercy." The God who corrects is the God who rescues, and the rescue flows from who He is rather than from what we have managed to become.

Tobit asks for a particular posture of praise: "with fear and trembling give ye glory to him." This is not cringing terror. It is the awe that comes from seeing clearly what God has done - "see then what he hath done with us" - and feeling the proper smallness of standing before the eternal King of worlds. And he asks that this glory be given not only in words but "in your works." Praise that stays on the lips and never reaches the hands is unfinished.

Tobit wants a whole life turned into worship, the inner awe and the outer deeds saying the same thing.

There is a quiet heroism in verse 7. "As for me, I will praise him in the land of my captivity." Tobit is still in exile. The healing of his eyes has not changed his address; he is writing this song in a foreign country, far from the temple, far from home. And he chooses to praise there, in the very place of his loss, "because he hath shewn his majesty toward a sinful nation."

This is the praise that costs something - worship offered not after every problem is solved but in the middle of an unfinished life, by a man who has decided that God is worthy of song even from the land of captivity.

Now the song becomes a summons. "Be converted therefore, ye sinners, and do justice before God, believing that he will shew his mercy to you." Three movements stand together in one breath. First, turn - be converted, change direction. Second, do justice - let the turning show in how you treat others. And third, believe - trust that God will be merciful. The whole verse is held up by that final clause. The reason a sinner can dare to turn and do right is the confidence "that he will shew his mercy to you."

Repentance here is not a desperate gamble; it is a homecoming offered to people who can count on the mercy waiting at the door.

The song turns now and speaks directly to a city. Tobit, far away in exile, addresses Jerusalem as though she were a person standing before him: "Jerusalem, city of God, the Lord hath chastised thee for the works of thy hands." What he said of himself in verse 5 he now says of the whole city. She too has been corrected; her suffering, like his blindness, is not meaningless. But by naming her "city of God" even in her chastisement, Tobit signals that the correction is not abandonment.

She is still God's city, and a city God still owns is a city God still intends to restore.

The hope rises into specifics. Tobit looks for the day when God will "rebuild his tabernacle in thee, and may call back all the captives to thee." This is the exile's deepest longing made into prayer: the dwelling place of God restored in the city, and the scattered people gathered home, "that thou mayst rejoice for ever and ever." Tobit's own small story has become the pattern for the great one. As his eyes were opened and his son brought home, so he believes the temple will be raised and the exiles returned.

The personal mercy he has tasted has taught him exactly what to ask for on behalf of his whole people.

Here the blind man becomes a seer of light. "Thou shalt shine with a glorious light: and all the ends of the earth shall worship thee." Tobit, who lived so long in darkness, foresees a Jerusalem ablaze with brightness, drawing the whole world toward her. The prophets sang this same vision: "Arise, shine; for thy light is come... and the Gentiles shall come to thy light" (Isaiah 60:1, 3). The man who knows the value of returned sight better than anyone now gazes at a city that will be all light, and at nations streaming from every horizon to worship the God who dwells in her.

Tobit pronounces a blessing on the builders: "blessed shall they be that shall build thee up." In a world that often celebrates those who tear down, the song reserves its blessing for the ones who repair, restore, and raise up what was broken. To build up the city of God is counted as a blessed work. This is a gentle redirection of every reader's energy. The people who join God in His restoring work, who set their hands to mending rather than wrecking, stand on the side of the blessing.

The exile's dearest hope returns once more: the scattered children "shall be gathered together to the Lord." Tobit has felt the ache of dispersion in his own bones, a family pulled apart by captivity, and so the gathering is his deepest joy. The same yearning runs through all of Scripture and reaches its fullest voice in Christ, who longed to gather Jerusalem's children "as a hen gathereth her chickens" (Matthew 23:37), and who spoke of gathering His scattered ones "from the four winds" (Matthew 24:31).

What Tobit longs for, the Lord Himself takes up as His own work.

Tobit turns inward and commands his own soul: "My soul, bless thou the Lord." It is the same posture the Psalms love - "Bless the LORD, O my soul" - the worshipper rousing himself to praise, refusing to let the moment pass unblessed. And the reason given is striking, because Tobit speaks of Jerusalem's deliverance as something already done: "the Lord our God hath delivered Jerusalem his city from all her troubles." Faith lets him speak of the future rescue in the past tense.

He is so sure of it that he blesses God for it as though it has already happened.

The vision reaches its dazzling height. The gates of Jerusalem will be built of sapphire and emerald, the walls of precious stones, the streets paved with white and clean stones. This is a city remade out of beauty itself, every surface gleaming. The image was not lost on the early church; it surfaces almost word for word in the closing vision of Scripture, where the holy city descends with foundations "garnished with all manner of precious stones" and "the street of the city was pure gold" (Revelation 21:19, 21).

Tobit's longing for one rebuilt city has become a picture of the dwelling place God is preparing for all His people.

And then, the sound of the city. "Alleluia shall be sung in its streets." The jeweled gates and shining walls are not the point; they are the setting for praise. The whole vision culminates not in wealth but in worship, in the cry of Alleluia - "praise the Lord" - rising from every street. This is where Tobit's song has been heading all along, from one healed man blessing God in a foreign land to an entire city become a chorus.

The same word will ring out in heaven's great multitude: "Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth" (Revelation 19:6). Tobit hears, from far off, the song that will never end.

The hymn ends where it began, with the eternity of God's reign. Tobit opened by blessing the One whose "kingdom is unto all ages," and he closes asking that the Lord "may he reign over it for ever and ever, Amen." The whole song is bracketed by everlasting kingship. A man who has known how short and uncertain a single life can be lays down his praise inside the one reign that never ends.

The Amen is the seal of his faith - so be it, let it be true - spoken over a future he trusts entirely to the God who scourges and saves.