Bible Verses and Early Church Commentary | Historical Christian Faith

⁶ Now therefore deal with me as seemeth best unto thee, and command my spirit to be taken from me, that I may be dissolved, and become earth: for it is profitable for me to die rather than to live, because I have heard false reproaches, and have much sorrow: command therefore that I may now be delivered out of this distress, and go into the everlasting place: turn not thy face away from me.

[AD 735] Bede on Tobit 3:1-17

Sarah, the daughter of Raguel in the city of the Medes, who had been given to seven husbands, and the demon killed them as soon as they went in to her. This symbolically announces the multitude of nations, whose teachers only knew the life of this age, which revolves in seven days, and could say nothing about eternity. Therefore, all of them were seized by the devil, as they were slaves to idolatry, until our true spouse, the Lord, came, who joined her to himself through faith, after overcoming the enemy; just as Tobias took Sarah as his bride after the demon was bound, by the command and cooperation of the archangel, through whom the divinity of our Savior is fittingly signified, just as his humanity is signified by Tobias. Nor should one be surprised that we say that the one person of the Mediator between God and men is symbolized by two persons, namely the angel and the man, who has read in the expositions of the venerable Fathers that his one person suffering for the salvation of the world is prefigured in Isaac, who was offered by his father on the altar, and in the ram, which was sacrificed. He who was killed as a sheep in his humanity, remains impassible in his divinity with God the Father, just as Isaac returned home alive with his father. For if the ram aptly designates the humanity of Christ, the man signifies the divinity; why should not the man much more aptly signify the humanity, and the angel the divinity?

Therefore, the holy angel of the Lord, Raphael, who is interpreted as the medicine of God, was sent to free both Tobias from blindness and Sarah from the demon. The Lord was sent into the world, who said of himself, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick" (Luke IV); who also redeemed the Jewish people from the darkness of disbelief, and the gentiles from the bondage of idolatry. Of whom the prophet said: "And his name shall be called the Angel of Great Counsel" (Isa. IX).

Source: Commentary on Tobit