How are Tobias’s and Sara’s prayers presented and answered?

Tobias prayed in tears, acknowledging God’s justice, truth, mercy and judgments. He asked God not to take vengeance for his sins or his parents’ offenses and confessed that their disobedience had led to captivity, death and reproach among the nations. He asked that his spirit be received in peace, saying that death was better for him than life.

The same day, Sara, daughter of Raguel at Rages in Media, suffered a maid’s reproach. She had been given to seven husbands, whom Asmodeus had killed at their first going in to her. When Sara corrected the maid’s fault, the maid accused her of killing the husbands and asked whether she meant to kill her too. Sara went to an upper room and spent three days and nights without food or drink, praying with tears for release from this reproach. On the third day she blessed God, saying that he forgave those who called upon him. She asked either to be released from the reproach or to be taken from the earth.

Sara declared that she had kept herself free from lust and had sought marriage in the fear of God. She considered that she might have been unworthy of the husbands, that they might have been unworthy of her, or that God might have kept her for another husband, saying that his counsel was beyond human power. In her prayer she expressed confidence that trials would be followed by deliverance and correction by mercy. These are her declarations, not an explanation supplied by the narrator for each husband’s death. At that time, the account says, both prayers were heard before God, and the holy angel Raphael was sent to heal them both.

The edition’s note distinguishes two places called Rages: it says the Greek text places Raguel in Ecbatana, also called Rages, while Gabelus lived in the other Rages.