Texts in Conversation
Augustine echoes Tobit's link between sin and punishment in Confessions 7 to explain captivity to sin, using Scripture to show why knowing the truth is insufficient without God's help.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Tobit 13:5
Deuterocanon
3 Acknowledge him before the nations, O children of Israel; for he has scattered you among them. 4 He has shown you his greatness even there. Exalt him in the presence of every living being, because he is our Lord and he is our God; he is our Father and he is God forever. 5 He will afflict you for your iniquities, but he will again show mercy on all of you. He will gather you from all the nations among whom you have been scattered. 6 If you turn to him with all your heart and with all your soul, to do what is true before him, then he will turn to you and will no longer hide his face from you. So now see what he has done for you; acknowledge him at the top of your voice. Bless the Lord of righteousness, and exalt the King of the ages. In the land of my exile I acknowledge him, and show his power and majesty to a nation of sinners: "Turn back, you sinners, and do what is right before him; perhaps he may look with favor upon you and show you mercy.' 7 As for me, I exalt my God, and my soul rejoices in the King of heaven.
Augustine, Confessions 7.21
Early Christian
With great eagerness, then, I fastened upon the venerable writings of your Spirit and principally upon the apostle Paul. I had thought that he sometimes contradicted himself and that the text of his teaching did not agree with the testimonies of the Law and the Prophets; but now all these doubts vanished away. And I saw that those pure words had but one face, and I learned to rejoice with trembling. So I began, and I found that whatever truth I had read [in the Platonists] was here combined with the exaltation of your grace. Thus, he who sees must not glory as if he had not received, not only the things that he sees, but the very power of sight—for what does he have that he has not received as a gift? By this he is not only exhorted to see, but also to be cleansed, that he may grasp you, who are ever the same; and thus he who cannot see you afar off may yet enter upon the road that leads to reaching, seeing, and possessing you. For although a man may "delight in the law of God after the inward man," what shall he do with that other "law in his members which wars against the law of his mind, and brings him into captivity under the law of sin, which is in his members"? You are righteous, O Lord; but we have sinned and committed iniquities, and have done wickedly. Your hand has grown heavy upon us, and we are justly delivered over to that ancient sinner, the lord of death. For he persuaded our wills to become like his will, by which he remained not in your truth. What shall "wretched man" do? "Who shall deliver him from the body of this death," except your grace through Jesus Christ our Lord; whom you have begotten, coeternal with yourself, and created in the beginning of your ways—in whom the prince of this world found nothing worthy of death, yet he killed him—and so the handwriting which was all against us was blotted out? The books of the Platonists tell nothing of this. Their pages do not contain the expression of this kind of godliness—the tears of confession, your sacrifice, a troubled spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, the salvation of your people, the espoused City, the earnest of the Holy Spirit, the cup of our redemption. In them, no man sings: "Shall not my soul be subject to God, for from him comes my salvation? He is my God and my salvation, my defender; I shall no more be moved." In them, no one hears him calling, "Come to me all you who labor." They scorn to learn of him because he is "meek and lowly of heart"; for "you have hidden those things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them to babes." For it is one thing to see the land of peace from a wooded mountaintop: and fail to find the way there—to attempt impassable ways in vain, opposed and waylaid by fugitives and deserters under their captain, the "lion" and "dragon"; but it is quite another thing to keep to the highway that leads there, guarded by the hosts of the heavenly Emperor, on which there are no deserters from the heavenly army to rob the passers-by, for they shun it as a torment. These thoughts sank wondrously into my heart, when I read that "least of your apostles" and when I had considered all your works and trembled.
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Notes and References
“... Conybeare (2016:59) notes: ‘The entire prayer of Tobit 13 is
in fact of immense importance for the themes of the
Confessions’. O’Donnell (1992b:6–7) demonstrates that
Tobit 13 was important for the Confessiones not only
because of allusions to its content, but even its structure,
which O’Donnell clearly sets out. Tobit 12:7, after all, has
Raphael say that it is important to reveal and confess the
works of God, which is the major impetus of the
Confessiones. O’Donnell (1992b:6–7) notes several allusions
to Tobit 13 in Confessiones 1.1.1, 1.2.2, 1.16.26, 2.2.4, 2.3.6,
2.6.14, 2.9.18, 3.3.5, 4.15.24, 7.21.27, 8.5.12, 8.6.14, 10.2.2,
10.6.8, 12.16.23, 13.38.53 and so on. ...”
de Wet, Chris L.
The Book of Tobit in Early Christianity: Greek and Latin Interpretations from the 2nd to the 5th Century CE
(p. 9) HTS Teologiese Studies Vol. 76, No. 4, 2020
* 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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