When I Die, Bury Me Well

""Sennacherib put to death many Israelites. So I stole their bodies to bury them; Sennacherib looked for them and he could not find them.""   Why do we bury the dead? To honor and respect them? To provide closure and comfort to the living? To provide the dead a final resting place? Tobit buried the dead as the ultimate work of mercy, and its pervasive presence in the narrative discourse of the book of Tobit invites reflection on and consideration of the reason for the practice of burial. The narrative drama radiates a universal sense of what it means to be in exile, namely, that it is an experience of death. Weaving together a complex of ideas related to Israelite interment practices and the reality of Israel's exile from the land given to them by God, this book explores the significance of burial as it relates to God's outstanding promises and Tobit's hopes for the household of Jacob. ""This interesting book shows how death and burial form part of the central themes of the Tobit narrative by focusing also on its ethical and collective dimension. Consequently, it should be regarded as an important contribution to research and by no means be neglected in future studies."" --Beate Ego, Lehrstuhl fur Exegese und Theologie des Alten Testaments, Evangelisch-theologische Fakultat, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum ""People dig holes to find treasures. The author has dug deeply into the book of Tobit and has unearthed its narrative preoccupation with burial of the dead: a good burial is a statement of hope in God who gives life. Thus the author has found us a treasure. Now we can read the book of Tobit and be enriched by its all-encompassing appeal for mercy."" --Nuria Calduch-Benages, Professor of Old Testament, Gregorian University, Rome; member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission ""This beautifully written book brings together some of the major themes that constitute both the core of the book of Tobit and the experience of many Jews in the Second Temple period. Those would be the experience of exile and the growing significance of charitable deeds. The book of Tobit has received a good deal of interest for precisely these reasons over the past decade or so, but the treatments have been very uneven. Macatangay, however, is one of the best interpreters we have, and readers will greatly profit from his astute guidance through the various twists and turns of the work's compelling storyline."" --Gary A. Anderson, Hesburgh Professor of Catholic Theology, University of Notre Dame; author of Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition (2013) ""When I Die, Bury Me Well advances our understanding of key leitmotifs--death, burial, and restoration--in the book of Tobit, offering fresh interpretations of this fascinating biblical text. Francis Macatangay reveals himself to be a most skilled and astute reader of texts through this nuanced examination of Tobit."" --Kelley Coblentz Bautch, Associate Professor of Religious and Theological Studies, St. Edward's University Francis M. Macatangay is an Adjunct Professor of Sacred Scripture and Theology at the University of St. Thomas School of Theology at St. Mary's Seminary in Houston, Texas. He is the author of The Wisdom Instructions in the Book of Tobit (2011). He also serves as pastor of St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Houston, Texas.