What instructions and marriage proposal does the guide give Tobias?

The travelers went on, with the dog following them, and spent their first night beside the Tigris. When Tobias went to wash his feet, a great fish came toward him. Frightened, he cried out to the guide. At the guide’s instruction he seized its gill and drew it onto land, where it lay panting at his feet. The guide told him to keep its heart, gall and liver as useful medicine. They roasted the flesh for the journey and salted what remained to serve until Rages.

Tobias asked what the organs were for. The guide said that smoke from the heart on coals drove away devils and that gall applied to eyes with a white speck would cure them. These are the guide’s claims within the account, rather than a general medical instruction. The edition’s separate note associates the heart with the liver mentioned later and interprets their use as God’s power working through humble creatures.

Asked where they would lodge, the guide proposed Raguel’s house. He said that Raguel was Tobias’s near kinsman and had an only daughter, Sara, whom Tobias should ask to marry, and said Raguel’s substance would come to him. Tobias objected that he had heard she had been married to seven husbands who had died and that a devil had killed them. As his parents’ only child, he feared bringing sorrow on them. The edition separately explains the passage’s reference to hell as the abode of good souls before Christ.

The guide answered with a warning about those who shut God out of marriage and gave instructions: three nights of continence and prayer with Sara, burning the liver on the first night, fellowship with the patriarchs on the second, and a blessing for sound children on the third. After the third night, he said, Tobias should enter marriage in the fear of God for love of children rather than lust, so that he might receive Abraham’s blessing in his children. The warning does not identify the seven husbands’ personal motives.