CHAPTER 3
1 Then Tobit inwardly sorrowed, and began to pray with tears, and said,
2 Lord, thou art just, and all thy dooms be just, and all thy ways be mercy, and truth, and doom.
3 And now, Lord, have thou mind of (or on) me, and take thou not vengeance of (or for) my sins, neither have thou mind of (or on) my trespasses [or remember my guilts], neither of my fathers.
4 For we obeyed [or obeished] not to thy commandments, and therefore we be taken into rifling [or into wasting], and into captivity, and into death, and into a fable or jangling, and into shame [or into reproof] to all nations, among which thou hast scattered us.
5 And now, Lord, thy dooms be great and dreadful; for we have not done after thy commandments, and we have not gone cleanly [or clearly] before thee.
6 And now, Lord, by [or after] thy will do thou mercy with me, and command thou my spirit to be received in peace; for it speedeth more to me (or it is more expedient for me) to die than to live.
7 And also it befelled in the same day, that Sarah, the daughter of Raguel, was in Rages (or in Ecbatana), a city of Media, and she heard shame [or the reproof] of (or from) one of the handmaids of her father;
8 for she was given to seven husbands, and a fiend [or a devil], Asmodeus by name, killed them, anon (or at once) as they had entered [in] to her.
9 And when Sarah blamed her maid for her guilt, (or for her sin), the damsel answered to her, and said, Thou slayeress of thine husbands, see we never upon (the) earth son either [or] daughter of thee;
10 whether also thou wilt slay me, as also thou hast slain seven men? At this word Sarah went into the higher closet [or into the over bed-place] of her house, and three days and three nights she ate not, neither drank;
11 but she continued in prayer with tears, and besought God, that he should deliver her from this shame [or reproof].
12 And it was done in (or on) the third day, while she had fulfilled her prayer, (or her praying),
13 she blessed the Lord, and said, God of our fathers, thy name is blessed, which when thou hast been wroth, [thou] shalt do mercy, and in time of tribulation thou forgivest sins to them, that inwardly call thee.
14 Lord, to thee I turn (al)together my face [or To thee, Lord, I turn my face]; and I lift up mine eyes to thee.
15 Lord, I ask of thee, that thou loose me from the bond of this shame, either certainly that thou take me away from above the earth [or certainly from above the earth thou deliver me].
16 Lord, thou knowest, that I never coveted (a) man for fleshly lust, and I have kept my soul clean from all covetousness [or from all lust].
17 I meddled [or I mingled] me never with players dissolutely and unhonestly, neither I gave myself to be (a) partner with them that go in unstable-ness.
18 But, Lord, I consented to take an husband with thy dread, not with my lust.
19 And either I was unworthy to them, either they peradventure were not worthy to me; for in hap [or peradventure] thou hast kept me to (or for) another husband.
20 For thy counsel is not in the power of man to know it.
21 Forsooth each that worshippeth thee hath this for certain, that if his life is in proving, he shall be crowned, if he continue patiently; soothly if he is in tribulation, he shall be delivered; and if he is in chastising, it shall be leaveful (or lawful) to come to thy mercy.
22 For thou delightest not in our losses; for after tempest thou makest peaceable, and after mourning and weeping thou bringest in [or thou pourest in] full out joying.
23 God of Israel, thy name be blessed into worlds, that is, till into without end.
24 In that time the prayers of both Tobit and Sarah were heard in (the) sight of the glory of the highest God;
25 and Raphael, the holy angel of the Lord, was sent to heal them both, whose prayers were rehearsed in one time (or were spoken at the same time) in the sight of the Lord.