By 2026, the world hardly
needed any convincing regarding the strident zeal for endless vengeance in the
Middle East, given the genocide still occurring in Gaza against the Palestinian
people. In 1945, the world had needed no convincing on just how severe, and at
what tremendous scale, state-sponsored (and engineered) hatred against a people
deemed “subhuman” could be. The 1959 film-version of Ben-Hur is saturated with
the desire for vengeance, with the antipodal motive of forgiveness only being
shown as a more powerful, and thus stronger, phenomenon at the end of the film when
Judah Ben-Hur’s mother and sister are spontaneously cured of leprosy at the
very moment in which Jesus dies on the Cross. Only in aiding Jesus with water
on his arduous way to the Cross does the Jewish man, Judah, realize the value
of the suffering man’s righteous, unmerited suffering, especially relative to
the value of even satisfied vengeance. At the moment of his death, Jesus, freed
of a mortal body, cures the two women as a result of Judah’s change of heart. The
message is that forgiveness wins over resentment and vengeance from a spiritual
standpoint.
Prior to the period shown in
the film, the wealthy Ben-Hur family took in and raised the Roman boy, Messala.
So, it is with a sense of utter ungratefulness that as an adult and a Roman
official that Messala turns on Judah for refusing to divulge the names of dissidents
by banishing him to work in as a rower in the Roman navy for five years and
sending Judah’s mother and sister to prison and then to a leper’s colony. Fortunately,
Judah saves a Roman general from drowning in a battle-at-sea and is rewarded by
being adopted by the general and given Roman citizenship. Judah has the wherewithal
to return to Jerusalem to challenge and vanquish Messala in a chariot race.
Even after Messala dies from being injured by Judah’s chariot during the race,
Judah is still not satisfied—still not free of his resentment. He walks by as
people are gathering to hear Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, which causes Balthasar
to remark, “You are choosing death.” This intriguing line can be unpacked.
Even vengeance satisfied,
albeit with Judah’s mother and sister still suffering from leprosy, is death—of
the spirit—whereas the qualities valued by Jesus in his sermon represent a
freed up spiritual life. Interestingly, were Balthasar to deliver the line to
Judah as Jesus is dying on the Cross, the allusion to death could be taken
literally, given the soteriological meaning of the Passion Story. Specifically,
the salvific meaning of Jesus’s death and resurrection is that the vicarious,
voluntary sacrifice pays off original sin and thus reconciles humans with God. Literally
walking past Jesus on the Cross would connote the choice of death rather than
eternal life. It is interesting that Balthasar remarks that Judah is choosing
death in refusing to stay to hear Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. The death is
figurative, in that Judah is still buried in resentment because his mother and
sister are still ill as a result of Messala’s punishments. As for Messala, in
turning on, in utter betrayal, the generous family that had raised him, he can
be reckoned as spiritually dead, and his literal death occurs before he can let
go of his chackles. Judah takes considerable time, but, unlike his adopted-brother,
Jesus’s example of selfless agape-love even amidst severe suffering sinks in
and softens Judah’s harden heart.
Before Messala’s death at the
hands of Judah in the famed race, Judah is rebuffed in his zeal for vengeance
by Ester, who, having heard Jesus preach, tells Judah that a young rabbi has
said that “forgiveness is greater, and love is more powerful than hatred.” Later,
just before the horse race in which Judah intends to kill M, Judah prays, “God
forgive me for seeking vengeance, but my path is set. Into your hands I commit
my life. Do with me as you will.” The request to be forgiven is a lie because
Judah himself has decided that his path towards exacting retribution is set.
Judah is not committing his life to God in any sense, and is again lying when
he says God can do with him what God will. In actuality, Judah is very much in
the driver’s (or chariot’s) seat concerning what he will do during the upcoming
race.
Judah goes on to win the race
and, in the process, he has killed his nemesis who has so unfairly subjected
Judah to years of severe hardship and suffering simply because Judah would not
betray his fellow Jews. The presiding Roman official remarks at the end of the
race that the spectators have made Judah the victor their god, albeit just for
the time being. Drunk with having exacted revenge, Judah is still of a hardened
heart when he leaves the track and walks past Jesus, who is shown atop a hill in
the distance—and not shown frontally in a close-up—just as he is just about to
give his famed Sermon on the Mount. Judah is still hardened, nevertheless,
because his mother and sister still have leprosy as a result of having been in
a dank prison-cell for five years. As his dying nemesis says to Judah just
before dying after the race, “The race continues.”
In witnessing Jesus struggling physically and mentally as he is being prodded and whipped by Roman guards no the way to be crucified, Judah is taken back. “What did this man do to deserve this?” Judah asks out-loud. That is the man who helped Judah with water when Judah was under extreme duress. It is not suffering itself that is given positive significance, but, rather, the willingness to take on the sins of others by suffering what they should by all rights suffer. The silent strength evinced by the suffering man who seems so weak suddenly is clear to Judah, who can now free himself from the chains of his own resentment. Ironically, letting go of resentment owing to the ongoing suffering of his mother and sister ends their suffering. He lets go of his resentment prior to the miracle healing that removes the ongoing reason for the resentment.
The miracle itself is important because it shows that in the story-world of the film, as in that of the Gospels, Jesus is the Son of God. Esoterically (i.e. , optional reading), the noetic significance of the title is dwarfed by the ontic significance of spiritual freedom over spiritual captivity, as evinced by Judah Ben-Her in the film as he offers Jesus water on the way to the Cross over having felt himself internally compelled to pass by Jesus's Sermon on the Mount.
Whereas the sort of explicit power evinced by Messala and the ship-galley task-masters, and, moreover, the Romans in Jerusalem even against Jesus on the way to the Cross, is quite visible, the power of letting go of vengeance and even offering compassion to detractors and even enemies is silent yet paradoxically stronger. The litmus test for Judah has finally to do with which of the two types of power he values more in the sense of which is stronger, and thus has more worth in itself. The relevant death is not physical, but, rather, spiritual, as per the human instinct for freedom, which Nietzsche ironically calls the will to life, or will to power, as ultimately felt best in overcoming (i.e., mastering, not repressing!) one’s most intractable instinctual urge, such as that of vengeance.
