Tobit's Blindness and Prayer

1 And when Esarhaddon was king I came home again, and my wife Anna was restored to me, and my son Tobias. And at our feast of the Pentecost,⁠a which is the holy Feast of the Weeks, there was a good dinner prepared me; and I laid me down to dine. 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,⁠b bring him and he shall eat together with me; and lo, I wait for you, my boy, until you come.⁠c 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. 4 And I sprang up and left my dinner before I had tasted it, and took him up from the street and put him in one of the chambers until the sun was set, to bury him.⁠d 5 Therefore I returned and washed myself, and ate food with mourning, 6 and remembered the word of the prophet which Amos spoke against Bethel, saying, Your feasts shall be turned into mourning, And all your ways into lamentation. And I wept. 7 And when the sun was set, I went and dug a grave and buried him. 8 And my neighbours mocked, saying, Is he no longer afraid?—for already I had been sought after to be put to death for this matter—And yet he fled away and lost all his possessions and lo, again, he buries the dead! 9 And the same night I washed myself and came into my courtyard and lay down to sleep by the wall of the courtyard, and my face was uncovered because of the heat. 10 And I did not know that there were sparrows in the wall above me; and their dung settled warm into my eyes and brought up white films; and I used to go to the physicians to be healed; and the more they anointed me with their medicaments, the more my eyes were blinded by the films, until they were totally blinded. And I was impotent in my eyes four years. And all my kindred did grieve for me, and Ahikar nourished me two years until he went to Elymais. 11 And at that time my wife Anna used to work for hire in the tasks of women,⁠e 12 and would send the tasks back to their owners: and they would pay her the wages. And on the seventh of Dystrus, she cut off the web, and sent it home to the owners and they gave her all her wages, and gave her in addition to the wages a kid of the goats. 13 And when she came into my house, the kid began to cry, and I called her and said, Where is this kid from? is it stolen? Render it to its owners; for we have no right to eat anything that is stolen. 14 And she said to me, It has indeed been given me over and above the wages. And I did not believe her, and I told her to render it to the owners; and I was abashed at her because of this. Then she answered and said to me, And where are your alms-deeds? Where is your righteous course of life?⁠f Behold, this your case is known.