Texts in Conversation
Tobit includes language from Deuteronomy 6 that requires loving God with your whole heart. Tobit sends his son to find a guest who reflects this ideal, using this pattern to present the narrative in continuity with the Torah.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Deuteronomy 6:5
Hebrew Bible
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! 5 You must love the Lord your God with your whole mind, your whole being, and all your strength. 6 These words I am commanding you today must be kept in mind, 7 and you must teach them to your children and speak of them as you sit in your house, as you walk along the road, as you lie down, and as you get up.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Tobit 2:2
Deuterocanon
2 And the table was set for me, and abundant food was set for me, and I said to Tobias my son, Go, my boy, and whatever poor man you shall find of our kindred of the Ninevite captives, who is mindful of God with his whole heart, bring him and he shall eat together with me; and lo, I wait for you, my boy, until you come. 3 And Tobias went to seek some poor man of our kindred and returned and said, Father. And I said to him, Here am I, my child. And he answered and said, Father, behold, one of our nation has been murdered and cast out in the marketplace, and he has but now been strangled.
Date: 225–175 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Notes and References
"... There are five discernable echoes of Deuteronomy 6:5 in Tobit, words or phrases that refer to loving God or being mindful of God with all one’s heart, soul, or strength. What is most impressive is not so much each individual allusion to Deuteronomy 6, but the cumulative force of all five passages coupled with the literary and theological context of Deuteronomy 6 ... when Tobit sets out to invite a needy Israelite to his Pentecost banquet, he commands his son to search for someone “who is mindful of God with all his heart and bring him and he shall eat together with me” (Tobit 2:2) ..."
Lori Ann Robinson Baron, The Shema in John’s Gospel Against its Backgrounds in Second Temple Judaism (Duke University, 2015), 92–93.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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