God against Messiah | 87melakhim of the neighboring peoples.”^14 Buber reads Solomon’s pious proclama-
tion that one’s heart should be satisfied with YHVH as a crafty retreat from the
unconditional insistence on heart and soul and might.^15 God “is not content to
be ‘God’ in the religious sense,” to claim only inner devotion, but demands outer
devotion as well, not just in ritual but also in the full conduct of life, not just from
the individual but from the people:
The striving to have the entirety of its life constructed out of its relation to the
divine can be actualized by a people in no other way than that, while it opens
its political being and doing to the influence of this relationship, it thus does
not fundamentally mark the limits of this influence in advance, but only in
the course of realization experiences or rather endures these limits again and
again.... He will apportion to the one, for ever and ever chosen by Him, his
tasks, but naked power without a situationally related task he does not wish
to bestow. He makes known His will first of all as constitution—not constitu-
tion of cult and custom only, also of economy and society—He will proclaim
it again and again to the changing generations, certainly but simply as reply
to a question, institutionally through priestly mouth, above all, however, in
the freedom of His surging spirit, through every one whom His spirit seizes.
The separation of religion and politics which stretches through history is here
overcome [aufgehoben] in real paradox.^16Buber’s polemic here is directed against both kings and scholars—especially
scholars who take the side of kings or who make it easier to do so. The warning
against marking the limits of divine influence “in advance,” along with the claim
that God’s will determines cult and custom as well as “economy and society”
(Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, the title of Max Weber’s magnum opus in sociol-
ogy), suggest that Buber may be thinking of Weber’s lecture “Politics as a Voca-
tion” and may be suggesting that Weberian political realism cannot be reconciled
with the faith of Israel. The position is illiberal in that it excludes the possibility
of separate “spheres” for religion and for politics. The very idea of “religion” as a
“sphere” unto itself is presented here as an impoverishment of divine rule.
The tendency toward direct theocracy expresses itself in two ways: first in
the community’s choice of a charismatic leader, a nonroyal figure whom it rec-
ognizes as temporarily inhabited by the charis of divine spirit.^17 This is the case
of Moses, Joshua, and the various shoftim (judges) in the book of Judges, who
arise to deliver the people from emergencies. The second aspect of theocracy oc-
curs between the death of one charismatic leader and the rise of another. This
interregnum is most appropriately called anarcho-theocracy. Israel has neither
(human) ruler nor corresponding institutions. The separate tribes tend to their
own business, confident that YHVH still rules as King even when he declines to
issue new orders.
To explain the movement between these two stages, Buber turns to Max We-
ber’s analysis of charisma and its “routinization.” He also borrows from Weber