Short Fiction · Chapter
On the Day of the Crucifixion explained
On the day of Jesus Christ's crucifixion, Ben-Tovit, a Jerusalem tradesman, suffers from a severe toothache.
What happens
On the day of Jesus Christ's crucifixion, Ben-Tovit, a Jerusalem tradesman, suffers from a severe toothache. His pain dominates his experience, making him indifferent to the monumental injustice occurring outside. He briefly watches the procession to Golgotha but is more concerned with his own suffering. After his toothache subsides, he visits Golgotha with his wife and neighbor Samuel, but remains absorbed in recounting his dental ordeal, oblivious to the cosmic tragedy.
Themes in this chapter
Suffering and Injustice
The chapter contrasts the cosmic injustice of the crucifixion with Ben-Tovit's trivial personal suffering, highlighting human indifference to great wrongs.
Isolation and Alienation
Ben-Tovit is isolated by his pain, unable to connect with the momentous events around him, and feels alienated from the crowd.
Characters to notice
- Ben-Tovit
A Jerusalem tradesman whose severe toothache consumes his attention on the day of the crucifixion, making him indifferent to the suffering of Jesus.
- Jesus of Nazareth
Crucified on Golgotha; briefly seen stumbling under the cross, but Ben-Tovit remains unmoved.
Key passages
“On that terrible day, when the universal injustice was committed and Jesus Christ was crucified in Golgotha among robbers—on that day, from early morning, Ben-Tovit, a tradesman of Jerusalem, suffered from an unendurable toothache.”
On the day of Jesus Christ's crucifixion, Ben-Tovit was preoccupied with a severe toothache.
Establishes the central irony of the chapter: personal pain overshadows a world-changing event.
“Ben-Tovit suddenly shuddered for pain; he felt as though someone had pierced a red-hot needle into his tooth and turned it there; he groaned and walked away from the parapet, angry and squeamishly indifferent.”
Ben-Tovit's toothache made him turn away from the crucifixion procession in irritation and indifference.
Illustrates his inability to engage with the suffering of others due to his own pain.
“Thus they walked, and Ben-Tovit made a martyr’s face, shook his head and groaned skilfully, while Samuel nodded compassionately and uttered exclamations from time to time, and from the deep, narrow defiles, out of the distant, burning plains, rose the black night. It seemed as though it wished to hide from the view of heaven the great crime of the earth.”
As Ben-Tovit recounted his toothache, night fell, as if to conceal the earth's great crime from heaven.
Ends the chapter with a stark contrast between Ben-Tovit's trivial complaint and the enormity of the crucifixion.