The book of Tobit has a style and motifs similar to popular Mesopotamian literature. Consider, for example, the text of Tobit 8:4-9:

Tobiah arose from bed and said to his wife, “My love, get up. Let us pray and beg our Lord to have mercy on us and to grant us deliverance.” She got up, and they started to pray and beg that deliverance might be theirs. He began with these words: “Blessed are you, O God of our fathers; praised be your name forever and ever. Let the heavens and all your creation praise you forever. You made Adam and you gave him his wife Eve to be his help and support; and from these two the human race descended. You said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; let us make him a partner like himself.’ Now, Lord, you know that I take this wife of mine not because of lust, but for a noble purpose. Call down your mercy on me and on her, and allow us to live together to a happy old age.” They said together, “Amen, amen,” and went to bed for the night.

The deictic “he began with these words” suggests oral performance. So too the poignant repetition in the penultimate clause, “They said together, ‘Amen, amen’.” Oral story-telling, including pictorial story-telling, was a pervasive form of human entertainment prior to the development of print and subsequent new communication technologies.