She and her father were dozing in the howdah, and he rode alone behind the guide. Aldebaran picked his way nimbly among stones in a dry streambed, and Ben-Hur let the reins lie on his neck. The steady rhythm of the horse’s gait helped him think calmly.
They might be riding to greet a King. Balthasar, however, thought they would see a Savior, an entirely different idea. A King would rule as Herod had or as Caesar did. A Savior would not be concerned with earthly power. A Savior, in Balthasar’s view, would redeem the faithful to eternal life, out of love. They might find neither—Malluch’s letter had simply mentioned a prophet. Yet Ben-Hur had a sense that something important awaited them.
His dreams—unlike Balthasar’s—had been confused. Where the old man heard clear statements, Ben-Hur had seen fragmentary images. Crowns. Glittering armies. Vast throne rooms, councils of powerful men—powerful like Arrius, but men of the East in glowing brocades and neat black beards. He himself was never present in these scenes. He did not command the troops or speak in the councils. And Iras, too, had appeared, though he could never hear what she said, no matter how hard he tried. Then Aldebaran tossed up his head and shied at a large lizard, and Ben-Hur’s mind returned to his surroundings.
He had remembered Bethabara as an insignificant crossing of the Jordan, so he was surprised when the guide pointed to a dusty blur on the horizon and said, “Look! We are not the only travelers to visit this place!” Soon they began meeting men who were either heading in the same direction or coming away. Shortly the crowds became more numerous. Their pace slowed to a walk, and Iras’s hand looped up the curtains of the howdah so that she and Balthasar could see out.
The excitement was palpable. Ben-Hur’s eyes roved through the throng as he tried to identify the man they had all come to see, but there was simply a sea of dark heads and dusty garments. He handed his reins to the guide and slipped off Aldebaran’s back.
The Jordan River, believed to be near the site of John the Baptist’s preaching
Looking around in the crowd, he noticed a tall, bearded man coming toward him with a shepherd’s crook. He stepped into the man’s way and said, “Peace be with you. Have you just come from the river?”
The man’s eyes lit up. “Yes! Are you here for the prophet? He is preaching at the riverbank. You will see him soon!”
“What is he saying?” Ben-Hur asked. “What has drawn such a following?”
“Amazing things!” the man answered, throwing his hands up. “He talks of repentance. He says we must be baptized. And that God—our God!—loves us, each one of us!”
Another man nearby asked, “Is he the Messiah?”
“He says not, though everyone asks. He just says that someone greater is coming. And . . . something else . . .” He frowned, trying to remember. “Oh, I know: it was ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord!”’”
“‘Make straight the way of the Lord!’” another voice responded. “I heard him say that too!” The two men nodded at each other with satisfaction.
“What did they say? Is he still there?” came a threadlike voice to Ben-Hur. He looked up and saw Balthasar leaning down from the howdah.
“He is. He is preaching. We’ll hear him soon,” Ben-Hur replied and mounted his horse.
But within a few minutes, the crowds began to shift. Ben-Hur could see that the lone figure who had been standing on a sandbar in the river stopped speaking. The mass of people on the eastern side of the Jordan divided, leaving room for him to walk up the bank.
“What do you see?” Balthasar asked.
“He stopped preaching,” Ben-Hur said. “He’s coming this way. I think if we stay here, we will see him clearly.”
And he was right. The multitudes, murmuring quietly, parted before the man, and in moments he was headed directly toward them. But what a shock!
“That man?” Iras whispered. “He looks like a wild animal!”
His hair was long and matted, falling halfway down his back and into his large dark eyes. He wore what looked like a beast’s pelt, or perhaps several of them stitched together just to cover his scrawny body. A few yards in front of the camel, he came to a halt, planted his staff, and looked around, catching the eye of man after man. “Prepare!” he said, in a booming voice. “Prepare the way of the Lord!”
The crowd drew back. There was something fierce and determined about the prophet, as if he could bend men to his will.
Yet a man in the robes of a scribe stepped forward. “Are you the Messiah?” he asked.
“After me comes he who is mightier than I,” said the prophet, “the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.”
“But you baptized, did you not?” persisted the scribe.
“I have baptized you with water,” came the answer, “but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Then he lifted his staff and moved forward. But a few steps later, he pointed to a man in the crowd. “Behold!” he shouted. “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
The masses did not press forward but fell away again, leaving a man alone in a circle of well-trodden ground. Ben-Hur saw him clearly. Everyone who was there that day would say the same thing in later years—that they had seen him, that they remembered. Yet not one could describe him with precision. He was a man; that was all. Dressed in white robes, like many of the men there. He didn’t speak. There would be arguments about his expression: Did he smile? Did he meet anyone’s eye? Did he gesture? Why was it, then, that every man who saw him that day felt blessed?
A relief of Christ done by Lew Wallace
Especially Balthasar. The camel, as ever obeying some compulsion of its own, folded gently to its knees. Balthasar clambered down from the howdah and walked a few steps until he could clearly see the man in white. He, like the camel, knelt with a grace he had not possessed in years. And Ben-Hur saw on his face joy and gratitude—and recognition. There was a moment of hush; then the voice of the baptist said with utter clarity, “This is he. . . . This is the Son of God.”
The Son of God. There was silence. Even the air seemed to stop moving. The sun still shone. Perhaps it gleamed more brightly on the head of the man in white. Perhaps there was a sound, a chord of unearthly voices. Or just a sense of grandeur, hope, warmth—belief. For an instant.
Then the moment was over. The robed man moved on. The baptist disappeared into the throng. Balthasar slumped to the dirt, and by the time he was carried back into the howdah, there was nothing more than a crowd milling around—but a crowd that had seen something remarkable. As they rode on to the river crossing, Ben-Hur leaned over to ask a stranger, “Who was that man in white?”
The man shrugged and answered, “Maybe he is the Son of God. But others say he is the son of a carpenter from Nazareth.”
And then Ben-Hur remembered. The face had been familiar to him, and the feeling the face gave him. It was a feeling of peace and patience and strength. And the last time he had felt it was when a stranger gave him water in a little village, on his way to the galley.
CHAPTER 47
JERUSALEM
Balthasar did not die on the spot. In fact, his glimpse of the unassuming man from Nazareth renewed his vitality. He refused, however, to return to Alexandria. Instead he insisted on staying in Judea to be closer to the man he called the Savior.
Where Balthasar went, so did Iras. In the days after the encounter with the baptist, this became clear. It also became clear to Ben-Hur that the pair were now somehow his responsibility. Balthasar claimed he would happily live in a cave, and that was obviously true. But it was unthinkable to house Iras in a cave, or indeed in anything less than a palace.
Fortunately, there was a palace available. With his usual crafty efficiency, Simonides had managed to buy the Hur palace from the Roman government. But if it looked to outsiders as if the Egyptian wise man owned the palace, that illusion might be useful. So Balthasar and Iras moved in. Balthasar, content, spent his
time in reading and prayer. Iras found that Jerusalem offered few opportunities for a woman of her independence and sophistication, so she turned her energies toward refurbishing Ben-Hur’s house. Everything was to be splendid, worthy of a king.
Ben-Hur himself knew little of this. Jerusalem, he felt, was too dangerous for him, and his family’s palace even more so. He returned to Galilee, recruiting more soldiers, instructing more officers, inventing new drills and training schemes so that the young men in every village could raise an armed cohort, complete with weapons and supplies for five days’ marching, within an hour. When the King declared himself, they would be ready.
TIMELINE OF JESUS’ MINISTRY
Here is a select list of some of the events in the life of Jesus that influenced the characters and actions in Ben-Hur.
“Jesus also did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written.” (John 21:25)
And yet the King was puzzling. A year went by, and another and a third. The King—or at least the son of the carpenter from Nazareth—roamed the region. If he was a king, his retinue was far from impressive. He made few claims for himself, but many claims for God. He was patient and gentle, but firm. And people were drawn to him, it was true. They sidled up to hear him speak a few words and never left. Sometimes after hearing this Jesus, a man would leave his plow in the middle of a furrow and walk away, never to return. Or drop his corner of a net of fish. Or round up his brothers and cousins to hear the Nazarene speak just one more time. Something about his message made you long to hear it again and again.
He made men—and women, too—feel strong and good. He made them believe there was a sense to the world. He got them to look at each other, really see each other with kindness and compassion. Crowds in Judea often meant fights, but not the crowds around Jesus. Food was shared. The children ran around his feet, and he laid gentle hands on their heads.
By the end of the third year, the army was ready. Ben-Hur knew he could do no more. He had been traveling intermittently with Jesus, hoping to get a sense of the man who would be the leader. Would he want cavalry? What strategy did he favor? Would he choose to attack the Romans in Jerusalem or launch his campaign elsewhere?
These all seemed like reasonable questions when he was out in the desert watching his troops or discussing tactics by a campfire. Simonides, whom he visited periodically, showed a surprising grasp of military affairs and a great zest for violence. Ilderim had a way of appearing at the camp in a whirl of Bedouin horsemen, arriving at a gallop with banners flapping and spears glittering for the sheer excitement of it. He would stay for a few days and then gallop away, leaving a few new mounts behind, taking a few back with him, and always bidding a fond farewell to Ben-Hur’s bay, Aldebaran.
Then Ben-Hur would visit a Galilean village like Cana and hear of the wedding banquet where Jesus had turned water into wine. Truly! Everyone had seen it! Or he would find the followers encamped in a large crowd, peacefully listening to the Nazarene’s preaching, which was so simple, yet sent chills down your spine. He often felt wistful in the presence of the followers. They seemed to understand something that was still a puzzle to him. It was much easier to be in the army camp, where the goals were familiar. Killing people was a skill as old as man.
Esther heard about Ben-Hur from her father. She suspected that Simonides knew more than he told her. Ever since the day of the chariot race, when she had betrayed her feelings, her father had not been able to speak of Judah without self-consciousness. Sometimes Esther found this endearing, but more often she was simply irritated. She knew that Iras had enthralled Judah. She knew that her own appeal—whatever it might be—was eclipsed beside the Egyptian’s. She was resigned to invisibility. But there seemed to be no way to convince her father of this.
So she was apprehensive when her father announced that they were going to Jerusalem for the Passover feast. At least in Antioch her duties kept her busy and, on the whole, satisfied with her life. What would she do in Jerusalem? It even occurred to her that Iras might contrive to put her to work. She knew nothing of palaces except that they were large. She was a slave; slaves worked. Would Iras try to put a broom into her hand? She flushed with anger, just imagining that encounter.
Yet Judah would be there. She tried to control her imagination, tried not to invent scenes of Judah’s warm welcome, honest appreciation, admiring glances. Those, she knew, would be for Iras. But practical as she was, she could not master her stubborn, unrealistic hopes.
The voyage was long and difficult. Simonides traveled in a litter suspended between two camels, and Esther knew he was in pain most of the time. Yet as they neared Jerusalem, he grew both calmer and more cheerful. One night, as the caravan rested near an oasis, he told Esther and Malluch that he had never expected to see Judea again. “I had forgotten,” he said, “how clear the light is. That alone is worth all the trouble and discomfort.” He looked fondly at Esther. “I know they fall heavily on you, and I have sometimes regretted my determination to come. But I hope that, once we arrive, you will see why I insisted.”
“I’m sure I will,” Esther answered. It was a lie, but what else could she say?
Yet as the sun crept lower in the sky a few days later, she stood on the rooftop of the Hur palace and understood her father’s compulsion. All around, the folds of tawny hills embraced the walled city. In the dry air, the grand buildings of the Temple gleamed while the sky shone like a great blue dome overhead, shading to pink and coral in the west. The Temple! The Holy Place was so near! The city was beginning to fill with pilgrims for the holy feast of Passover, and even from the rooftop, Esther was aware of a sober joy filling the streets.
She turned away from the view when she heard a squawk and the rush of wings. Malluch’s arrival had driven a flock of parrots up into the palm tree where they roosted, chattering and dropping seedpods. He brushed a blue feather from his shoulder as he saluted Esther, saying, “Peace be with you, daughter of my master. I’ve been sent to tell you that the son of Hur is on his way.”
“Thank you,” Esther said, hoping she was not blushing. “I’m sure my father will be glad to see him.”
“So will we all,” came Iras’s voice, accompanied by the jingle of her necklaces as she stepped onto the rooftop. “Are you surveying the city, Esther? How does it seem to you?”
Esther hesitated a moment, then said, “Compact.”
Iras laughed. “The holy city of your faith and you call it ‘compact’! So practical! But I suppose that is your role in life.”
“And what do you see as yours?” Esther asked politely.
“Oh, I think we will be hearing more about that soon,” Iras said, gazing at the mosaic floor. “Malluch has told you that Judah is on his way?”
“Yes, thank you,” Esther answered. “But I will go now to tell my father.” She caught Malluch’s eye, and he nodded slightly as if in approval. How did she sense that he found Iras as trying as she did?
“Can’t you do anything about those birds?” Iras said as Malluch watched Esther slip down the stairs.
“The birds?” he asked, turning back to the Egyptian. “We have tried, you may remember. There was the poison and the hawk and the nets. Perhaps you could ask the son of Hur, when he comes, what his family used to do to keep them away. I am at my wit’s end.”
“Oh, never mind,” she said. “We will have more important things to discuss. They just make such a mess. It gets everywhere. And I want Judah to be happy with the way everything looks.”
“I will send someone to clean up,” he said.
“No, don’t bother.” Iras wandered over to the divan in the summerhouse. “I want to be alone. But when Judah arrives, you can send him up to me.”
He just nodded, watching her arrange her skirts so that her ankles showed.
“That is all,” she said, catching his eye. “Oh, you could send up something to drink as well. Maybe Esther could bring us a tray. I’m
sure Judah will be happy to see her again.”
He felt a pulse of anger and dropped his eyes as he imagined her stepping barefoot into a fresh patch of bird droppings.
But the next time he saw Iras, she was wearing a pair of golden slippers and a smug expression as she hung on Judah’s arm. The young prince had asked for the household to assemble in the high-ceilinged central chamber of the palace. Malluch pushed Simonides in on his wheeled chair to find Balthasar propped with cushions on a divan. Esther slipped in behind them, finding a padded stool that she set down next to her father. When Ben-Hur caught sight of them, he removed himself from Iras’s grasp and crossed the floor. “Peace be with you, Simonides!” he exclaimed. “And with you as well, sweet Esther. Blessings be on you both!” He smiled as Esther rose to greet him and shook his head. “Please, be seated. It makes me very happy to see you both in my father’s house. I hope the voyage from Antioch was not too difficult.”
“Not easy,” Simonides replied, “but worth taking. I am glad to be back in our land. I have been away too long. And glad also that Esther should see the land of her fathers.”
Ben-Hur turned to her, and Malluch, watching closely, thought she blushed.
“What do you think of it?” Ben-Hur asked.
She considered, then stated calmly, “It is very moving to be at the center of our faith, among so many other Jews.”
“Have you been to the Temple?” he asked.
“Not yet. Perhaps when the crowds have diminished after the holy days, my father and I will go.”
“I hope I will still be here,” he replied. “I would like to go with you.”
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