Tobit 5 – Tobias answers that he
will go and try to get the silver his father left in Media some twenty years
earlier, but he wonders how he will get the money since the man to whom it was
given does not know him. Tobit says that he “set his signature to a note which
I cut in two, so that each could keep half of it. I took one piece, and put the
other with the silver” (5:3). CLEVER!
Tobias
needs to get someone who knows how to get to Media; so he does. He finds the
angel Raphael (without knowing he is an angel). He brings him in to meet his
father and when he does Tobit bewails his blindness. The angel tells him he
will be healed. Tobit asks him what tribe he is from and the angel tells him he
is Azariah, son of one of Tobit’s relatives. Tobit tells Azariah/Gabriel that
he will pay him to guide his son. They prepare to leave. Tobias’ mother cries,
but Tobit tells her not to worry.
Tobit 6 – They leave and spend
the first night by the Tigris River. A big
fish leaps from the water and tries to take off Tobias’ foot, but the angel
gets Tobias to catch it and take its innards for medicines and eat some of it.
When he asks, the angel tell Tobias that the heart and liver of the fish, if
burned in the presence of someone afflicted by a demon or evil spirit will
cause the evil spirit to flee. And the gall can be used to anoint a person’s
eyes if they have a film on them. Clearly this fish
will be used to help both Sarah and Tobit – they suffer from both of these
things.
They
arrive near Ecbatana and go to the home of Raguel. The angel tells Tobias that
Raguel has a daughter who is very sensible and pretty. And Raphael tells Tobias
that he has a right to marry her because she is from the same tribe, and that
the marriage will be arranged that very night. Tobias has heard the stories
about her having been married to seven husbands who all died because of some
demon who kills them. Tobias is advised to burn the heart and liver on some
incense when he goes to consummate the marriage. “Do not be afraid, for she was
set apart for you before the world was made” (6:18). Tobias is very drawn to
her. He “fell so deeply in love with her that he could no longer call his heart
his own” (6:18).
Luke 20 – By what authority is
Jesus teaching. He knows they are
simply trying to trap him, so he turns the question around and asks about where
John the Baptist’s authority came from.
They won’t answer that because they fear the crowd’s love of John and
faith in his prophetic identity.
Jesus tells the
parable of the vineyard owner who sends servants to collect his share of
the produce, and how they are always insulted or injured - they are never
killed in the Lucan version. You can compare Matthew 21:33 and Mark 12:1.
Finally the vineyard owner sends his beloved son; but this inspires only a
conspiracy to kill him and take the property. What will the owner do? “He will come and destroy those
tenants and give the vineyard to other” (20:16).
He
[the owner’s son] is the stone the builders rejected. “Everyone
who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on
whom it falls” (20:8). Again, the analogy is meant to show the DANGER people
expose themselves to when they do not recognize the importance of this son.
As
part of the plan to trap Jesus, the teachers of the Law ask him if it is lawful
for them to pay taxes to the emperor or not. He takes a coin and shows them the head and inscription on
it—that it is the emperor’s. “Then give to the emperor the things that are the
emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s” (20:25).
Sadducees,
who doubt the idea of bodily resurrection, challenge him with a story of the
childless woman and her seven husbands.
They ask whose wife she will be when the “resurrection of the dead”
happens. Jesus says they will not be as they were in this life; they will be
like angels. He argues that Moses
himself taught that the dead are raised, for he speaks about the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob; but God is God of the living,
not the dead.
And
how can the Messiah be a son of David, for in the psalms it says “the Lord said
to my Lord, Sit at my right hand. . .” (20:41-44). If David calls him Lord, he
cannot be his son. Jesus appears here to be trying to tell people that the
concept of the Messiah they have is not accurate—he will not be a Davidic heir
but something more. The Messiah David
was looking toward would have been his Lord
too, not his son or heir.
Jesus
warns people against the hypocritical testimony of the scribes—that they love
to have all the accoutrements of holiness and importance but not the real
substance of righteousness.
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