86 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
at which the thesis itself is affirmed or denied by arguments about how to read
the text.
The Theopolitical Thesis: Ancient Israel and Anarcho-Theocracy
The theopolitical thesis holds that throughout the prestate history of the tribes of
Israel, and continuing well into the monarchical period, the true King of Israel
was held to be YHVH, the God who had led the Exodus, and that no human in-
stitution could usurp his sovereignty.^12 This belief is only rarely dominant, never
hegemonic, in the Israelite population; most often it contends with various types
of idolatry and differing political conceptions. However, Buber maintains that
for a significant minority, such a consciousness did exist in ancient Israel, despite
scholarly claims to the contrary. The best statement of this thesis occurs early in
chapter 8, “On the Theocracy”:
The covenant at Sinai signifies, according to its positive content, that the wan-
dering tribes accept JHWH “for ever and ever” as their King. According to its
negative content it signifies that no man is to be called king of the sons of Isra-
el. “You shall be for Me a kingly domain,” “there was then in Jeshurun a King”;
this is exclusive proclamation also with respect to a secular lordship: JHWH
does not want, like the other kingly gods, to be sovereign and guarantor of a
human monarch. He wants Himself to be the Leader and the Prince. The man
to whom he addresses His will in order that he carry it out is not only to have
his power in this connection alone; he can also exert no power beyond his lim-
ited task. Above all, since he rules not as a person acting in his own right, but
as “emissary” [Entbotener], he cannot transmit power. The real counterpart of
direct theocracy is the hereditary kingship.... There is in pre-kingly Israel no
externality of ruler-ship; for there is no political sphere except the theo-political
[denn es gibt keine politische Sphäre außer der theopolitischen], and all sons
of Israel are directly related (kohanim in the original sense) to JHWH, Who
chooses and rejects, gives an order and withdraws it.^13For Buber, the Sinai covenant is theopolitical and not “merely” religious. This
means, first and foremost, that the belief in the sole kingship of YHVH is no mere
liturgical formula: many people take it literally and seriously; it determines their
political organization.
Buber distinguishes between “prestate” and postmonarchical conceptions of
divine kingship. Before the institution of a human monarchy, the divine melekh
(king) demands of his subjects unconditional devotion, of which the ritual sym-
bol is sacrifice. With the founding of the monarchy, however, the divine demand
is compromised by the demands of the human monarch, from tithes to military
service; the result is a kind of secularization, a separation of the religious from
the political. Buber thus has a low opinion of King Solomon, despite his status
as folk hero in most Jewish literature. He sees “syncretistic faithlessness” in the
man who, “as hospitable as a Roman emperor, allotted holy high-places to the