On Tobit 70–93

So you will say to me: “See, the law forbade a pledge to be taken away, not to be received, and ordered it returned to the poor, not to all.” As for bodily pledges, Ezra too has taught us enough that you moneylenders can no longer go against the declaration of your fathers. For when those who had lent and received others’ pledges were ordered to restore them, they said: “We return them, and we seek nothing from them.” Good fathers, who decreed that debtors’ pledges should be returned; good moneylenders too, who answered that they would both return the pledges and not demand the money they had given. Both the sentence of your fathers’ decision and the declaration of the creditors bind you to these terms.

There is also another pledge, which the spiritual law forbids to be taken away and, if it has been given, orders to be returned before sunset, which the debtor returns and himself brought out. Now a debtor is everyone who hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it. The evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. Do not enter his house, then, to take that pledge. For woe to the one who causes one of these little ones to stumble! If by his own folly he has lost his pledge, you will have no fault. But if he is poor, return the pledge before sunset; and the pledge is a garment. If he seems rich to himself, he deceives himself if he hands over his pledge; but if he is poor, not having the riches of the Spirit, return his garment to him before sunset.

If it were a bodily pledge in question, it should surely rather have been returned by day, lest the shame of the naked body be exposed by daylight; for darkness does not expose the naked. And if the concern were that the poor man had nothing to cover himself with while sleeping, it would surely say that a blanket or a cloak was to be returned. But by saying “garment” it rather means the tunic which we put on and with which we are clothed. Return to the poor man, then, his tunic, so that he may sleep in it at night.

Does it not seem to you to signify that poor man who is ordered to go with one tunic and not to seek a second, sent by Christ to preach the gospel? For he is the poor in spirit who can sleep; for one sated with riches, there is no one who lets him sleep. The poor man sleeps the sleep of resurrection, which the rich man cannot sleep, because he is choked by riches and pleasures. He sleeps the rest of Christ, who says: “I slept and rested and rose.” This is that tunic woven from the top, which Christ wore, which those soldiers whom you recognize could not tear. For none of them tears the garment of Christ, but divides it, as it is written: “They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” The evangelists divided his garments among them, and for his clothing, that is, for the preaching of the gospel with which the Lord Jesus is clothed even today, they cast lots: that lot, certainly, which fell on Matthias, so that he was added as the twelfth to the number of the apostles when the name of the traitor was excluded. And it is well said of the evangelists that they cast lots; for a lot hangs as it were on divine judgment. And so, because they did not speak by their own power, and not all said all the same things, but many said different things that another had not said, we recognize that the grace of the Holy Spirit assigned to them as by lot what each should say of the works of the Lord Jesus, so that they divided among themselves, at his bidding, his deeds to be written down.

There is also that tunic which the apostle points out, saying: “Put on the Lord Jesus.” This is the tunic that covers our unseemly parts and surrounds them with more abundant honor in Christ. We put on the heart of mercy in Christ; we put on the glory of the cross, which is “to the Jews a stumbling block, to the Greeks foolishness.” Those blush at it who think it something to blush at; but for us, far be it to glory except in the cross of the Lord Jesus. These ignoble parts of ours have more abundant honor, because through the Lord’s passion an eternal kingdom is prepared for us; for the more one has sinned, the more one loves. Let us then be buried with the Lord Jesus, that we may be worthy to share in his resurrection; let us strip off the old man with his deeds and put on the new, in whom is the forgiveness of sins. So the word of God is a good cloak and clothing.

With this clothing the sons of Noah covered their father’s nakedness, taking a garment on their shoulders and walking backward so as not to see their father’s private parts, that is, the bodily things that carry a certain shame of human generation. And so the one who wished to see received the reward fit for a narrower mind, that he should become a slave (“for everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin”); hence he remained among earthly things. Let no one take this garment from the poor man; or if he has taken it, let the sun not set on the stripped man before he restores it, lest the poor man’s sin be charged to the lender and he begin to toil not only under his own sin but under another’s too.

Let this pledge be returned in this night of the world; let one be clothed with this garment in the darkness of this world. This pledge belongs to the Lord’s lot, not to the opposite one. For we read of two lots in Leviticus, of which it is said: “One you shall make for the Lord, the other for the one sent away.” The one sent away has sent his lot away to the moneylenders; the servants of the Lord are in the lot of Christ. Placed in this lot, Aaron shut out the misery of the opposite lot when, standing between two parts of the people, he did not allow death to creep from the dead into the lot of the living, putting his own body in the way. The good pledge of this lot is the cloak of the word. Let no one take this tunic from you, debtors; pledge this tunic to no one, if you never wish to suffer shame, so that you may sleep among the lots as Aaron did, may sleep between the two Testaments, may sleep the sleep of resurrection and be able to restore yourselves. This is the garment. Even if you have pledged it, holy Solomon in the Proverbs urges that it be taken back, saying: “Take away your garment; for the insolent man passes by.”

The garment of wisdom is of those robes which Wisdom made for herself of fine linen and purple; that is, the robe of faith consists of the preaching of heavenly things and the blood of the Lord’s passion. Fine linen figures heavenly things; by the appearance of purple the mystery of the sacred blood is declared, by which the heavenly kingdom is conferred. Indeed, what precedes shows that the garment of wisdom is meant; for he said first: “Be wise, my son, that your heart may rejoice,” and two verses further on he says: “But the imprudent, coming upon it, pay the penalty. Take away your garment.” Take it away, then, lest you incur the penalty of imprudence; lest that most wicked common moneylender, recognizing you stripped of your own garment, try to uncover the confusion of your disgrace and persuade you to cover yourself with leaves, and, seeing yourself naked, you fear to come into the sight of God.

“Repay your neighbor in time,” it says; “keep your word brief and deal faithfully with him, and at all times you will find what you need.” Innocence does not like to defend itself with many words. Susanna did not need the assertion of her voice: she kept her word brief toward the Lord, and at once she was found worthy to obtain the testimony of her own chastity. The elders said a great deal, laboring to cover the truth with the paint of words; but not the daughter of Judah. She was silent before men, she spoke to God. A woman’s defence before the people itself would have been a cause for blushing, and while modesty was being defended, shamelessness would have been displayed. She kept her word brief, saying to the Lord: “You know that they have spoken falsely against me.” And the Lord stirred up the spirit of the boy Daniel as the avenger of chastity.

Keep your word brief, then, so that repayment, not your tongue, answers the creditor; or, mystically: keep your word brief, that is, bring it to completion; for “the Lord will make a word complete and cut short upon the earth,” that is, so that from many reckonings a summed total may be agreed for you. Deduct what was paid out in various expenses, so that you may keep safe what remains; as the Lord, out of the many dispensations of the Jews, out of that long reckoning of sins, at last completed and cut it short, so that a remnant might be saved by the election of grace and be kept for a seed, through whom he might revive the half-dead hope of the synagogue.

How shameful it is to repay with annoyance the kindness of one who has helped you! When you have cheated the one to whom you owe, you will find no creditor afterwards in your time of need. How unworthy it is that, when you cannot sustain your living even while you owe nothing, you think you can sustain both your living and a debt. Think first how you will pay, and then borrow. “I take the fruits of my fields,” he says. But how will those that do not suffice for use suffice for the increase of interest incurred? “But I will sell my property.” And from where will come the fruits for you to live on? Interest is not paid off by its own money but increased; by counting it is heaped up and grows.

Then, do you not consider the humiliation and shame of the one who asks? Until you receive, you kiss the hands of the proud moneylender; you lower your voice, lest its clearer sound offend his ear, lest more people hear you begging. Poverty carries no crime; there is no disgrace in need; but to owe is shameful, not to repay is shameless. You will ask for a delay when you begin to be summoned at the time fixed for payment; instead of money you will bring vexation, you will plead the time, you will pile up excuses, and though you promised the whole, you will barely restore half, so as not to seem to cheat entirely. You will make a friend an enemy; you will return insult for honor, cursing for blessing. Consider how this harms your reputation; recognize how far it differs from a good man.

So while you are free of chains, draw yourself back; call yourself back from the yoke and burden of slavery. Are you rich? Do not borrow. Are you poor? Do not borrow. If you are rich, you suffer no need to ask. If you are poor, consider the difficulty of repaying. Wealth is diminished by interest; poverty is not relieved by interest. For evil is never corrected by evil, nor is a wound cured by a wound, but it is made worse by an ulcer.

See to these things, lest, while you ask for money, you pledge your mill or your upper millstone. The mill is that by which fine flour is made, at which one woman grinds fine flour who is taken, and another who is left. Perhaps the one is taken who always grinds the word of God so as to have fine flour; she makes spiritual meal, cleans out the old leaven so as to be a new lump, guards her mill, interprets the Scriptures, keeps for herself the upper millstone. But that one is left who pledges her mill. When she has ground something carelessly, she pledges the stone that is on the mill. I ask what this stone is. I have read: “The stone which the builders rejected, this has become the head of the corner.” Why on the mill? Because he is the one who helps those who grind; he it is who says: “Search the Scriptures, in which you think you have eternal life.”

Do not, moneylender, take this upper millstone in pledge, lest you fall on it; for “everyone who falls on this stone will be broken, and on whomever it falls it will crush him.” Nor should you take a widow’s pledge. Both are grave even according to the letter: to take away from the needy the use and the tool of living, or to strip a widow of her pledge; but it is graver if you withhold the word from a soul widowed of the word, so as to impose on her the barrenness of widowhood.

And so that you may know that I urge these things with loving affection, and that it is permitted to lend well, I will show you which moneylender you ought to imitate. “There were,” he says, “two debtors to one moneylender; one owed five hundred denarii, the other fifty. When they had nothing to repay with, he forgave them both. Which of them, then, loves him more?” Simon the Pharisee answered and said: “I suppose the one to whom he forgave more.” And his judgment was praised, the Lord saying: “You have judged rightly.” The Pharisee judged rightly, though he had thought wrongly, supposing that the Lord did not know the woman’s sins rather than that he forgave them. But his judgment is praised so that every excuse may be taken from him.

More was forgiven the church, which was gathered from the people of the nations, since it owed more; but it also paid more, not to one who exacted but to one who forgave. It gave water for Christ’s feet, because it cleansed its own sins; it kissed his feet, bearing the tokens of peace; it poured oil on his feet, itself bestowing mercy on the poor (these are the feet of Christ, for in them Christ walks more innocently); and it wiped them with the hair of its head, for whoever has the disposition of humility is humbled before Christ. And therefore, he says, “her many sins are forgiven, because she loved much.”

Notice that the Lord both bestows mercy as one who is generous and dispenses judgment with compassion. He forgave beforehand by grace, but he knew to whom he was forgiving. The Jew has no excuse. To me, as a sinner, he forgave more; to him, as ungrateful, he granted less. Yet he knew that he, being ungrateful, could not repay what he had received, and that the church, mindful of grace, would repay the more, the more it had been granted.

So you have a moneylender to follow, if you wish to be rewarded with praise, if you wish there to be nothing for us to reprove. For we do not disparage the person but the avarice. Nor did it escape me that some said, when our discourse two days ago had pricked their feelings: “What did the bishop mean by treating against moneylenders, as if something new had been committed, as if earlier people had not done it too, as if lending at interest were not old?” It is true, and I do not deny it; but the fault too is old. Indeed sin is from Adam, guilt from the time of Eve, transgression from the beginning of the human condition. But Christ came for this reason: to abolish what had grown old, to found new things, and to renew by grace what guilt had made old; for this he offered himself to the passion, to renew by the Spirit and set all free. But the devil deceived Eve so as to trip up the man and put the inheritance in debt. What do moneylenders do?

They deceive those they have put in debt; they bind sureties. But Tobit did not seek a pledge or demand a surety. You must run, then, to find a surety and bind him with your debts. See, another enemy is being prepared. For when you have nothing to pay the debt with, he will be held for you. You will be found a cheat in his regard, and a deceiver, since you will have deceived a friend. He will be stripped, he will be led into chains for you, you will find him a harsher exactor than the creditor, as he alleges: “Press your fellow citizen for whom you stood surety.” So it will come about that you too begin to be ungrateful and pass over what is written: “Do not forget the kindness of your surety; for he gave his good life for you.” You will have to say: “Who asked you to pledge your word? For if you had not pledged your word, I would not have received the money. I received counterfeit money; he gave me bronze mixed with gold. Would that you had not offered yourself! Perhaps the creditor put you up to it, or you him.”

So beware of binding yourself for another’s debt, lest you be said to have sold this too, and lest, if the debtor gives you some token of gratitude, as the custom of friendship has it, you seem to have bought it. Or if you wish to intervene, moved by a friend’s entreaties and ashamed to refuse, intervene in such a way that you know that, if he is not equal to paying the debt, it must be paid from your own means. Come prepared for this. For you have read: “Do not stand surety beyond your strength; for if you stand surety, think of it as paying it back”; and further on: “Help your neighbor according to your strength, and take heed to yourself that you do not fall”; that is, do not bind yourself for a larger sum than the resources of your means can bear and pay. For if you hand over what you have, you have lost wealth, you have not lost good faith. You do not feel the losses to your reputation; you have redeemed a friend without fraud on your part. Elsewhere too the Proverbs of Solomon warn you of this: “Standing surety, stand surety for your friends, as one who binds himself as surety for his friends.” But if you do not have the means, hear what Solomon says: “Do not give yourself as surety out of respect for a person; for if you have nothing to pay with, he will take the bedding from under your sides.” So the good lender gains gratitude, the wicked one execration.

But holy Tobit, not content with these limits of virtue, knew too that a hired man must be paid his wages. He offered as much as half, and deservedly found an angel in place of a hired man. And how do you know, lest perhaps you cheat some just man of his wages, or worse, a weak one (for woe to the one who causes one of these little ones to stumble!), how do you know whether there is an angel in him? For we ought not to doubt that there can be an angel in a hired man, since Christ can be there, who is wont to be even in the least.

So give the hired man his wages, and do not cheat him of the wages of his labor; for you too are Christ’s hired man, and he has engaged you for his vineyard, and a heavenly wage is laid up for you. So do not harm the servant working in truth, nor the hired man giving his life; do not despise the needy man who spends his life in his own labor and sustains it by his wages. For this is to kill a man: to deny him the support owed to his life. You too are a hired man on this earth: give the hired man his wages, so that you too can say to the Lord when you pray: “Give a reward to those who wait for you.”

Tobit says to you: “Luxury is the mother of famine,” and in this he teaches self-restraint. He also says: “Pay the wages of every man who has worked for you on the same day, and let not a man’s wages remain with you; and your reward will not be lessened.” He says to you: “Do not drink wine to drunkenness”; he says to you: “Share your bread with the hungry” (you see what he wants you to lend) “and cover the naked with your garments. From all that you have in abundance give alms. At all times bless the Lord.” In these things, then, is eternal lending and everlasting interest.