Drafted by Grok 4.7 on 8 October 2026. First draft. Not independently reviewed. Aramaic and Hebrew where a Qumran copy can be read (4Q196–4Q200), and otherwise the longer Greek of Codex Sinaiticus. The shorter Greek in Swete is not the base. Gaps in Sinaiticus are not filled from a later edition.
1In the reign of Esarhaddon I came back down to my house, and my wife Anna was restored to me, and Tobias my son. At our festival of Pentecost, which is the holy feast of weeks, a good meal was prepared for me, and I reclined to eat.
2The table was set in front of me, and I spoke of a captive from Nineveh who remembers with his whole heart: “Bring him, and he will eat with me. Look, I will wait for you, child, until you come.”
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The Greek packs the table, the captives of Nineveh, and the man who remembers into one cramped line, then gives the command to bring him. The English keeps that command and does not add a search clause the verse does not have.
3Tobias went to look for some poor person among our kindred. He came back and said, “Father.” I said, “Here I am, child.” He answered, “Father, one of our people has been killed and thrown into the marketplace, and he is still lying there, strangled.”
4I jumped up and left the meal before I tasted it. I took him up from the square and put him in one of the small rooms until the sun went down, and then I would bury him.
5I came back, washed, and ate the bread in grief.
6I remembered the word of the prophet, what Amos spoke against Bethel: “Your festivals will be turned into mourning, and all your songs into lament.” And I wept.
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Sinaiticus names Amos and Bethel. The English translates that Greek sentence. It is not adjusted to match a particular Hebrew verse of Amos.
7When the sun had set I went, dug a grave, and buried him.
8My neighbors laughed and said, “He still isn’t afraid. He was already hunted to be killed for this, and he ran away, and here he is burying the dead again.”
9That same night I washed, went into my courtyard, and slept by the courtyard wall, with my face uncovered because of the heat.
10I did not know that sparrows were in the wall above me. Their droppings fell warm into my eyes and produced white films. I went to the doctors to be healed, and the more they smeared medicines on me, the more my eyes went blind from the white films, until I was completely blind. I could not see for four years. All my kindred grieved for me. Ahikar provided for me for two years, before he went to Elymais.
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Sinaiticus says four years of blindness here, and two years of support from Ahikar. Later the book gives other numbers for Tobit’s age. They are not harmonized. The Hebrew fragments read for this draft do not preserve this verse clearly enough to replace the Greek.
11At that time Anna my wife was earning wages in women’s work.
12She would send the work to the people who had hired her, and they paid her. On the seventh of Dystros she cut the cloth from the loom and sent it to them, and they paid her the full wage, and they gave her a kid from the goats for the hearth.
13When the kid came in to me it began to bleat. I called her and said, “Where did this kid come from? It had better not be stolen. Give it back to its owners. We have no right to eat anything stolen.”
14She said to me, “It was given to me as a gift, on top of the wage.” I did not believe her, and I told her to give it back to the owners, and I blushed with anger at her over it. She answered me, “And where are your gifts of mercy? Where are your right acts? Look. Everyone can see what has happened to you.”