Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
Tobias, weary from burial, falls asleep and is blinded by the droppings of swallows: whereupon, assailed with reproaches by his wife and friends, he receives everything, like another Job, with marvelous patience.
Vulgate Text: Tobias 2:1-23
1. After these things, when it was a feast day of the Lord, and a good dinner had been prepared in the house of Tobias, 2. he said to his son: Go and bring some of our tribe, who fear God, that they may feast with us. 3. And when he had gone, he returned and told him that one of the children of Israel lay slain in the street. And immediately springing from his couch, leaving his dinner, he came fasting to the body: 4. and taking it up, he carried it secretly to his house, so that when the sun had set, he might cautiously bury him. 5. And when he had hidden the body, he ate bread with mourning and trembling, 6. remembering that word which the Lord spoke through the prophet Amos: Your feast days shall be turned into lamentation and mourning. 7. But when the sun had set, he went and buried him. 8. Now all his neighbors argued with him, saying: You were already ordered to be killed for this very thing, and you barely escaped the sentence of death, and again you bury the dead; 9. but Tobias, fearing God more than the king, seized the bodies of the slain, and hid them in his house, and buried them in the middle of the night. 10. Now it happened that one day, wearied from burial, coming into his house, he cast himself down beside a wall and fell asleep, 11. and from the nest of swallows warm droppings fell upon his eyes as he slept, and he became blind. 12. Now this trial the Lord permitted to befall him, so that an example of his patience might be given to posterity, as also of holy Job. 13. For since from his infancy he had always feared God and kept His commandments, he was not made sorrowful against God because the plague of blindness had befallen him; 14. but he remained immovable in the fear of God, giving thanks to God all the days of his life. 15. For just as kings insulted blessed Job, so his relatives and kinsmen mocked his life, saying: 16. Where is your hope, for which you gave alms and burials? 17. But Tobias rebuked them, saying: Do not speak thus; 18. for we are children of saints, and we look for that life which God will give to those who never change their faith from Him. 19. But Anna his wife went daily to weaving work, and from the labor of her hands brought what sustenance she could obtain. 20. Whence it happened that she received a kid of the goats and brought it home; 21. and when her husband heard its bleating voice, he said: See that it is not stolen; return it to its owners; for it is not lawful for us either to eat or to touch anything from theft. 22. At this his wife answered angrily: Your hope has manifestly been made vain, and your alms have now been revealed to be useless. 23. And with these and other such words she reproached him.
Verse 1: When It Was a Feast Day
1. When it was a feast day. — Pentecost, as the Hebrew and Greek texts have. For on this day especially one should devote oneself to works of charity. For these are works of the Holy Spirit, whose feast is celebrated at Pentecost, Acts ii, 1 and following.
Verse 4: He Should Cautiously Bury Him
4. And when the sun had set, he should cautiously (secretly, lest anyone accuse him before the king and he thereby endanger his life, as had happened in chapter i, verse 22) bury him. — "By the prohibition," says St. Ambrose, chapter 1, "he was not so much deterred as spurred on, lest he seem to abandon the duty of piety out of fear of death: the penalty of death was the price of mercy." The same in book I of Offices chapter iv: "Tobias," he says, "expressed the model of piety more clearly when, leaving the banquet, he buried the dead, and invited the poor to the food of his humble table." And St. Augustine, in the book On the Care for the Dead, chapter 1 and following: "Tobias," he says, "is commended for having earned God's favor by burying the dead, as the Angel witnesses." For burial is the last office of mercy, a debt of nature, as it were the honor of the deceased and the consolation of kinsmen, and a desire of nature. Hear St. Ambrose here, chapters 1 and ii: "This is a great work. If we are commanded to cover the naked while living, how much more must we cover the bodies of the dead? If we are accustomed to escort travelers a long distance, how much more those who have departed to that eternal home, from which they will not return? Nothing is more excellent than this office: to render service to one who can no longer repay you, to rescue from birds, to rescue from beasts a sharer of our nature. Wild beasts are reported to have shown this humanity to dead bodies — will human beings refuse it?"
Add that the bodies of the faithful saints must be buried, so that by this we profess our faith and hope in the resurrection, namely that they are not cast away like the carcasses of horses and dogs, whose souls perish with the body, but are buried as destined to rise again in soul and body to immortal life. Again, through burial great honor is given to the virtue of saints and martyrs: hence the early Pontiffs had such great care for burying martyrs; indeed St. Nicomedes, by burying the body of St. Felicula the Martyr, and St. Justin the priest of St. Lawrence, and many others through the burial of martyrs, attained the crown of martyrdom.
So Marcian, when he later came upon the body of a recently slain man and wanted to bury it, was seized as if he had killed him, and was therefore condemned to death; but by God's providence it happened that the true author of the murder was discovered, and so Marcian was freed, says Evagrius, book II, chapter 1. And by this deed Marcian merited to be raised to the empire and to become the husband of St. Pulcheria, sister of the Emperor Theodosius, than whom no emperor was better, braver, or more pious: so Baronius, year of Christ 450.
Verse 10: He Cast Himself Down Beside a Wall
10. Now it happened that on a certain day (in Greek, that same night, namely, which followed the day of Pentecost, mentioned in verse 1), he cast himself down beside a wall. — The Hebrew adds: I did not immediately enter my house, because I was polluted from the dead man (from contact with the dead man whom he had buried according to the law of Numbers xix, 11 and 16); but I slept with open eyes, outside the courtyard beside the wall in the open air, where swallows nest and cast their droppings on the ground, fouling everything with them.
Verse 11: Warm Droppings Fell upon His Eyes
11. And from the nest of swallows warm droppings fell upon his eyes as he slept, and he became blind. — "Of swallows:" the Greek has strouthia, that is, sparrows; but the Septuagint translates strouthia for the Hebrew sipporim, that is, birds, as Vatablus translates. But our translator rightly understood from the circumstances of the place that these birds were swallows; for their droppings blind the eyes; whence also another Hebrew text has here deror, that is, a free bird, namely a swallow, which flies freely, and freely associates with humans, and nests in houses, says Rabbi David. Whence that symbol of Pythagoras: "Do not have swallows under the same roof," that is, beware of the company of gossips and whisperers, as St. Jerome explains from Aristotle in the Apology against Rufinus, and Clement of Alexandria, book V of the Stromata chapter iii. So also among the Latins any birds are sometimes called sparrows, as Serarius shows here.
And he became blind, — because the droppings of swallows are dry, hot, and burning, and therefore dry up the moisture of the eyes, and so naturally cause blindness. So Francisco Valles, Sacred Philosophy chapter xlii. Therefore Lyranus is less correct in denying this blinding power to swallow droppings. More probably Dionysius and Valles judge that Tobias was not fully blinded, but that merely a white film and membrane were drawn over his eyes: which surgeons subsequently remove with a needle, restoring the eyes to their freedom and sight, on which matter more in chapter vi, verse 9. Moreover, for this reason the young of swallows, living among their parents' droppings, are blinded, but sight is restored to them by their parents through the herb called chelidonia. Hear Tertullian, book On Repentance chapter xiv: "The swallow, if she has blinded her young, knows how to restore their sight with her chelidonia." And Pliny, book VIII, chapter xxvii: "Swallows showed that chelidonia is most salutary for sight, healing the injured eyes of their young with it." And book XXV, chapter viii: "With this (chelidonia) swallows have restored sight to the eyes of their young in the nest, as some claim, even when the eyes have been torn out."
This is remarkable, as is that other thing which the same Pliny writes, book X, chapter xxxvii, that the eyes of swallows, once plucked out, grow back. Aelian asserts the same, book III, chapter iii; and Aristotle is cited, but imperfectly. For the words of Aristotle, book VI History of Animals chapter v, are: "If anyone irritates with a probe the eyes of very young swallow chicks, they heal again, and they subsequently fully regain the power of sight." Now it is surely one thing, says Aldrovandus in his work on the Swallow, page 663, to regain damaged sight, and another for plucked-out eyes to grow back, which Aelian and Pliny assert. The same Aldrovandus, page 689, affirms from Dioscorides and Avicenna that the ash of a swallow chick mixed with honey and sprinkled on the eyes dispels their dimness with restored clarity, and he contends from Albert the Great that the gall and cold droppings (for hot droppings are acrid and burning, whence they blinded Tobias) of swallows have the same effect.
Tropologically, Blessed Peter Damian, book II of his epistles, epistle 12, and in order 33: "What," he says, "do the lightly flitting swallows signify, except the light and smooth-speaking manners of flatterers? who, while they soothe with the sweetness of their fair speech, while they anoint the head of the listener with the oil of flattery, blind the interior eyes, so that they cannot enjoy unobstructed light."
Again, Dionysius the Carthusian says: We see that upon the sleeping Church the droppings sometimes fall from the nests of heretical swallows, and many are blinded. Moreover, in book II, chapter lvi, Thomas of Cantimpre explains how swallows and birds are hostile to bees, that is, how demons are hostile to pious and chaste souls. "It can," he says, "also designate another kind of temptation, like the swallows by whose droppings Tobias was blinded, or the harassment of other birds, so that under the appearance of virtue we may be enveloped in the darkness of vices; for example: someone seeks to become rich and to amass wealth, so that in the end he may make a more generous will and make Christ his heir — yet he has left his wealth to lords of the land, or to his relatives, or his dependents, or to any wicked possessors who seized it. We see this especially among clerics, whose goods should belong to the poor, and what is superfluous to them every day should be generously distributed, not in a purse or a chest, but to the unworthy mouth of the hungry and to the stomachs of the starving."
Verse 12: An Example of His Patience
12. Now this trial the Lord permitted to befall him, so that an example of his patience might be given to posterity, as also of holy Job. — Tobias and Job are therefore two examples and mirrors of patience, to be constantly looked upon and imitated by all who are blind and afflicted; for no evil befalls any faithful person except from the certain foreknowledge and will of God, either to purge him from vices, or to perfect him in virtue and patience, and thus to increase his merits and rewards in heaven. So God permitted the just Abel to be slain by fraternal impiety; Abraham to be tried by the holocaust of his dearest son; Joseph to be wickedly sold by his brothers; Moses with the entire people of Israel to be oppressed by the cruel tyranny of Pharaoh; David to be subjected to the implacable hatred of King Saul; Susanna to be exposed to the calumnies of the unchaste; the Prophet Isaiah to be sawn in half with a saw; Daniel to be cast to the lions. See the ten reasons why God permits the Saints to be afflicted, as enumerated by St. Chrysostom, homily 1 to the people. Truly St. Augustine, sermon 226 On the Times, which is about Tobias: "For this purpose," he says, "he incurred the ruin of blindness, that he might receive an Angel as physician."
Verse 13: He Was Not Saddened Against God
13. He was not saddened against God, — so as to murmur or complain and say: Lord, why did You permit me, while doing Your work, namely burying the dead, to be fouled by swallow droppings and to be blinded? Hear St. Ambrose, book On Tobit, chapter ii: "The prophet, weary from so holy an office, while resting beside the wall of the courtyard, from droppings falling from a sparrow's nest, incurred the white film of blindness, and did not groan in complaint, nor say: Is this the reward of my labors? He grieved more at being cheated of the gift of his services than of his eyes: and he considered the blindness not a punishment, but an impediment."
Moreover, the Greek text, and from it St. Ambrose, add: And white films formed on my eyes. And I went to physicians, and they did not help me; but Achiacharus (my nephew through my brother) supported me, until I departed to Elymais, to avoid danger, concerning which see the end of the last chapter. For it seems that Tobias, after his blindness, was again accused before the king by someone and despoiled of his goods, but, as the Greek and Hebrew have it, was supported and sustained by Achiacharus. But Achiacharus himself seems for this reason to have suffered calumny, as is said in the Greek at the last chapter, and then Tobias either was banished or fled to Elymais, as we read in the Greek. So Serarius and others.
Verse 14: He Remained Immovable in the Fear of God
14. But he remained immovable in the fear of God, giving thanks to God all the days of his life. — This is an act of heroic patience, this the state of a holy and perfect man, who, despising all earthly things, both adverse and prosperous, dwells in mind in heaven, and already begins and tastes in advance the heavenly happiness. So Job, afflicted on all sides, said in chapter i, verse 21: "The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." In all adversities, therefore, give thanks to God, and you will be holy, indeed blessed. Moreover the Author of the Questions from both testaments in St. Augustine, Question cxix: "How praiseworthy," he says, "holy Tobias is, Scripture teaches us, whose devotion neither captivity diminished, nor the loss of his eyes persuaded to stop blessing God: nor did the exhaustion of his substance turn him from the way of justice and truth. For necessity proves the just man. To preserve equity in want is true and perfect justice. Where the devotion of some is diminished, there the praiseworthy Tobias finds increase." And shortly after: "The mind of holy Tobias, raised to God, was neither broken by captivity nor humbled by poverty."
Thus the Saints in blindness gave thanks to God with Tobias, indeed they loved their blindness. Blind was St. Didymenius the martyr, to whom when Julian the Apostate reproached his blindness: "I indeed," said Didymenius, "give eternal thanks to God Almighty that I cannot see Julian." At last, for the outstanding service he had rendered to the Christian law and for overthrowing the monstrous idols of the pagans, he was thrown into the Tiber and from there passed to heaven; this one blind man saw more than all the sighted worshippers of phantoms. Blind was Didymus, the teacher of St. Jerome, whom Jerome himself calls his "seeing man." Blind for four years was Abbot Spes, whose dying soul flew to heaven in the form of a dove, as St. Gregory witnesses, book IV of the Dialogues chapter x. See more in our Matthew Rader, part III of the Viridarium, chapter iii. Blind was St. Audomarus, bishop of Therouanne, in the year of the Lord 658, who, when through St. Vedast he had recovered the use of sight long lost, is reported to have borne it with an uneasy spirit, and to have obtained by his prayers that his reopened eyes should be veiled again by blindness, which he kept saying was sent upon him by God for his salvation. He saw what advantage blindness brought, and how many occasions of evil it cut off. That nun described by John Moschus in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter xcvi, plucked out her own eyes and sent them to a young man captivated by the beauty of her eyes, and so pierced his heart that she made him a most proven monk. St. Aquilinus, in the time of Clovis, appointed Bishop of Evreux, asked the eternal light to close his mortal eyes, so that he might contemplate the heavenly light with the stronger eyes of the mind: he obtained his wish, nevertheless performing the office of the pontificate excellently by preaching. So his life reads in Surius under October 19.
Verse 15: Kings Insulted Blessed Job
15. For just as kings insulted blessed Job. — From this it is clear that the friends of Job, namely Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, were kings, that is, petty kings and princes of some towns, on which more in Job chapters ii and the last. They had come to console Job, but instead of consolation they brought desolation; for they accused him of grave crimes, as if for these he were so dreadfully punished by God: whence it is clear that Job rebuked them. Is it not said in chapter vi, verse 23, that they "detracted from words of truth?" in verse 26: "that they fashioned reproofs only for rebuke, and uttered words to the wind, rushed upon the orphan, and tried to overthrow a friend?" Are they not called in chapter xiii, 4, "fabricators of lies and cultivators of perverse doctrines?" chapter xvi, 9: "speakers of falsehood?" and chapter xix, 2: "How long," says Job, "will you afflict my soul and crush me with words? Behold, ten times you confound me, and you are not ashamed to oppress me. You raise yourselves against me and reproach me with my disgraces." But in the end, who was a more weighty witness or judge against them than God Himself? To one of them certainly, chapter xlii, verse 7, God cries from heaven: "My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; because you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has." So Serarius.
Moreover, Job while still living is called blessed, because, as St. James says, chapter i, 12: "Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been proven, he will receive the crown of life." "Blessed was Job," says St. Fulgentius, epistle II, chapter ix, "when he lived justly in riches; but more blessed when he proved more just in poverty. Blessed was he when surrounded by ten children; but more blessed when, struck by the loss of all of them at once, he remained immovable in the love of God. Blessed also was he in bodily health; but he became more blessed in his wound. More blessed also on a dung heap full of filth than in a palace adorned with marble."
Verse 16: Where Is Your Hope?
16. Where is your hope? — That is: Your hope has deceived you, and was false and deceptive; for you hoped through almsgiving to obtain from God all prosperity, and behold, God through the burial of the dead has blinded you and deprived you of eyes. For what is more unhappy and more wretched than one who is bereft of sight and blind?
Verse 18: We Are Children of Saints
18. We are children of saints, — namely of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, etc.; therefore let us imitate their faith, hope, patience, and constancy in adversity. The same says the afflicted Christian: I am a child of Christ; therefore I will constantly look upon His passion and cross, and imitate His patience. I am a child of the Holy Apostles and Martyrs, such as St. Paul, St. Lawrence, St. Stephen, St. Vincent, etc., who endured so many and so great things for Christ: therefore I will follow them, and even my small suffering I will generously and bravely bear for the love of Christ. For I am a child of the Saints, and therefore I myself am holy, that is, faithful, consecrated to God, and called by Him to perfect holiness, which consists in patience. "For patience has its perfect work," James i, 4.
And we look for that life which God will give to those who never change their faith from Him. — Tobias aptly responds to those insulting him: "Where is your hope?" That is: My hope does not refer to present goods, but to future ones. For I hope that after this life there is another life, blessed and eternal, which God will give to those who persevere constantly in faith and hope in Him through whatever adversities. This hope of another and happy life stirred up the seven Maccabee brothers to overcome, indeed to despise, frying pans, drums, racks, and every torment; whence they said fearlessly to the tyrant Antiochus: "You indeed, most wicked one, destroy us in the present life, but the king of the world will raise us up, who have died for his laws, in the resurrection of eternal life," II Maccabees ix. The same was felt and said by nearly all the other martyrs to a man, who, as the Apostle says, Hebrews xi, 37: "They were stoned, they were cut asunder, they were tempted, they died by the sword, etc., not accepting deliverance, that they might find a better resurrection;" because Christ Himself also, as the same Apostle says in chapter xii, 2, "for the joy set before Him (of the soon-coming resurrection and glorious ascension) endured the cross, despising the shame." St. Francis imitates Him: "So great," he says, "is the glory I expect, that every punishment delights me."
Verse 20: She Received a Kid of the Goats
20. Whence it happened that she received a kid of the goats and brought it home, — into the house. The Greek adds that this kid was given to Anna as a gift in addition to the wages for her weaving; and when Tobias plainly did not believe Anna when she said this, she angrily mocked him saying: "Your hope has been made vain, etc." Tobias had reason to doubt about theft, both because such a kid had never appeared in his house, nor is such a gift usually given as wages for weavers, nor had Anna ever before received and brought such a thing; and also because Anna was poor: he therefore feared that poverty had compelled her to bring home a stray and lost kid; and also because he was a most ardent lover of justice and a most bitter hater of theft, as well as of a most tender and delicate conscience: "For it is the mark of good minds to fear fault where there is no fault," says St. Bernard.
In a similar manner, in the greatest want and hunger, St. Sanctulus, fearing that bread divinely offered was "perhaps stolen, and that he might commit a fault under the appearance of piety," was afraid to set it before his hired workers, according to St. Gregory, Dialogues book III, chapter xxxvii.
Verse 22: Your Hope Has Been Made Vain
22. At this his wife answered angrily: Your hope has manifestly been made vain, and your alms have now been revealed to be useless, — since through them you have brought yourself, me, and the whole family into such want, blindness, and distress. Learn here from Tobias to receive curses, indeed even injuries, from one's closest friends in return for good deeds, and to bear them steadfastly. This is the reward of patience, this is its crown: that patience itself provokes a new suffering, and in it is crowned with new and greater patience. Hear St. Augustine, sermon 48 on Matthew: "How great is thought to be the unhappiness of those who do not see this bodily light! Has someone been blinded? Immediately it is said: He had an angry God; he committed some evil. This is what the wife of Tobias said to her husband. He was crying out about the kid, lest it be stolen: he did not want to hear the sound of theft in his house. She, defending what she had done, struck her husband with reproach; and when he said: Return it, if it is stolen; she answered back: Where are your righteous deeds?
How blind was she, who was defending theft? And what light did he see, who was commanding that the stolen goods be returned! She was outside in the light of the sun, he was inside in the light of justice. Which of them was in the better light?"
And St. Cyprian, book On Mortality: "And Tobias, after magnificent works, after many and glorious manifestations of his mercy, suffering blindness of eyes, fearing and blessing God in adversity, through the very affliction of his body, grew in praise, whom even his own wife tried to lead astray, saying: Where are your righteous deeds? See what you suffer. But he, stable and firm in the fear of God, and armed with the faith of religion for all endurance of suffering, did not yield in his pain to the temptation of his weak wife, but rather earned God's favor by greater patience, whom afterward the angel Raphael commends."
In a similar manner St. Saturus, steward of the household of Huneric the Arian king, when he was being solicited toward Arianism by the king's greatest threats, and then by his own wife's many tears, fearlessly replied with St. Job: "You speak as one of the foolish women. I would be afraid, wife, if the sweetness of this bitter life were the only thing. You are serving the devil's craft, wife. If you loved your husband, you would never drag your own husband to the second death. Let them take away our children, separate my wife, take the property of my Lord — I, secure in the promises, will hold to these words: If anyone does not give up wife, children, fields, or house, he cannot be My disciple. What more? When his wife departed with the children, having been rejected, Saturus is strengthened, is tried for the crown, is stripped, is ground down with punishments, is dismissed a beggar." So Victor of Utica, book I of the Vandal Persecution, near the end.
Corresponding Virtues of Job and Tobias
Job and Tobias were very similar in many things: first, in lavish almsgiving and every kind of works of mercy, such as Job describes of himself in chapter xxxi, and Tobias here in chapter i.
Second, in the constant endurance, indeed thanksgiving, for adverse circumstances, especially poverty, blindness, and diseases. For these are themselves great benefits of God, inasmuch as they are the material of great virtue and great reward. Therefore the patient Job said: "The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." Tobias said the same.
Third, Tobias endured all these things on account of the hope of the future blessed life, verse 18. So also Job, chapter xix, 25: "I know," he says, "that my Redeemer lives, and on the last day I shall rise from the earth. And again I shall be clothed with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God, etc.; this hope is laid up in my bosom."
Fourth, Job was mocked by his wife and friends, but he mocked the mockers in return; so also Tobias.
Fifth, God restored to Tobias his stolen wealth and his sight; so also to Job, in the last chapter, He returned everything double.