Remembered here means “was mindful of,” “called to mind,” or “thought about.” It is not that Tobias had forgotten what Raphael had told him to do, his “instructions” (Good News Translation, literally words).

On the order of events in verses 2-4, see first the note on 6.18. In that note the place of the fish organs in the sequence of events was left unsettled, since it was not relevant there. But here it is. The problem is this: Are Edna and Raguel just standing around the bed where Tobias and Sarah are lying, while Tobias throws the fish organs onto a brazier? There are three solutions:

(1) Ignore the problem. This is what Good News Translation, New Revised Standard Version, and New American Bible do.
(2) Assume that the parents leave the room at the end of verse 1, and indicate this, as Jerusalem Bible and New Jerusalem Bible do at verse 4, “The parents meanwhile had gone out.” The difficulty with this solution is that the text does not say that. But it is clever.
(3) This solution involves some boldness. Zimmermann observes that the problematic sentence in verse 4a, “they went out and shut the door of the room,” ends with the same Greek word as does verse 1, “room.” Suppose the original text was “They led the young man away and into the bedroom. Then they left and shut the door of the bedroom.” If a scribe copied the first sentence, and then looking back at his copy, saw the second occurrence of “room,” he would have left out that second sentence. Then if he or another scribe later noticed the omission, he could well have written it in the margin, from where a later scribe incorporated it into the text, but at the wrong place, verse 4. This sort of thing happened frequently with the copying of manuscripts. Zimmermann translates with this rearrangement of text, verse 4a immediately following verse 1. It is probably taking no more liberty than adding “meanwhile” in verse 4.

Not to brush off solution 1, we must allow the possibility that the text, problem and all, is correct, and that the fault is the author’s. This author is not the best literary craftsman in the world—after all, this scene could have been filled with dramatic tension, but the author has long since given it all away and robbed the scene of any suspense. He could well have reported events clumsily. This Handbook, therefore, recommends that translators follow solution 1.

The Greek clause that New Revised Standard Version translates where he had them can equally well be rendered “which he had with him,” as in New American Bible. The bag is new information; nothing is said of it in 6.6, although in the other Greek text Raphael there tells Tobias to keep these organs safe.

The embers of the incense: See the note on 6.17.

An alternative translation model for this verse is:

• Then Tobias thought about what Raphael had told him about the fish’s liver and heart. So he took them out of the bag where he had kept them [or, which he had with him] and put them on the hot coals where incense was burned.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Tobit. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.