3 Tobiah went out to look for some poor person among our kindred, but he came back and cried, “Father!” I said to him, “Here I am, son.” He answered, “Father, one of our people has been murdered! He has been thrown out into the market place, and there he lies strangled.”
4 I sprang to my feet, leaving the dinner untouched, carried the dead man from the square, and put him in one of the rooms until sundown, so that I might bury him.
5 I returned and washed and in sorrow ate my food.
6 I remembered the oracle pronounced by the prophet Amos against Bethel:“I will turn your feasts into mourning,and all your songs into dirges.”
7 Then I wept. At sunset I went out, dug a grave, and buried him.
8 My neighbors mocked me, saying: “Does he have no fear? Once before he was hunted, to be executed for this sort of deed, and he ran away; yet here he is again burying the dead!”
9 That same night I washed and went into my courtyard, where I lay down to sleep beside the wall. Because of the heat I left my face uncovered.