God against Messiah | 99of and receptivity to that unconditionedness. The familiar distinction between
“mere” henotheism, the belief that one’s god is the most powerful of all gods,
and true monotheism, the belief that one’s god is the only real one, is at work
here in the background. Buber takes it further: “The doctrine of uniqueness has
its vital ground not only in this, that one formulated thoughts about how many
gods there are and perhaps also thought to establish this, but in the exclusiveness
which rules over the faith-relation as it rules over the true love between man and
man; more precisely: in the total validity and the total effect of the exclusive-
ness.”^60 The commitment to this exclusiveness in all areas of life is the mark of
the Israelite faith.
However, this faith does not simply come upon the people at a stroke. It must
be fought for, and “the inner fight for JHWH, for exclusiveness, and for dealing
seriously is to be regarded as the genuine form of movement in the history of
faith of Israel.”^61 It stands in contrast to other, idolatrous possibilities, which seek
to make truth and error appear compatible by juxtaposing true and false service.
Buber names two such tendencies: “Baalization” and “Molechization.” The for-
mer assimilates foreign powers to YHVH in an effort to gain control over those
powers; the latter attempts to control and domesticate YHVH himself, making
him one’s own. The golden calf incident in Exodus 32 is the prime instance of
Baalization. Even from the standpoint of the calf worshippers, the calf does not
represent some god other than the one who led them out of Egypt; rather, that
very god is the one said to be located in and possessing the molten calf. The prime
example of Molechization, however, is found in the thread of references in the
historical and prophetic books to the practice of passing children through fire
as a dedication le-molekh, which Buber construes not as “to Molekh” as though
Molekh were the proper name of a rival god, but as a polemical device signifying
the distortion of true service l-melekh, to the King: “The service of molekh de-
monizes an actual and characteristic essential demand of JHWH. The demand,
posed by the nature of JHWH Himself as the unconditional king of existence, for
unconditioned surrender, for that ‘with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your might,’ finds its ritual response in the usage of the s’mikha which we scarcely
meet with outside Israel.” The s’mikha, the expiatory sacrifice of an animal that
transfers identity from the self to the animal, is the true form of service to which
child sacrifice stands in opposition.^62
To make this argument, however, Buber must trudge once again through
some philological thickets. He has many potential allies in the belief that pas-
sages like Jeremiah 32:35 make no sense without the assumption that the child
sacrifices were offered to YHVH rather than to another god.^63 Who could ever
believe, even mistakenly, that the jealous YHVH would command sacrifices to
“Molekh”? However, many scholars take the view that biblical passages mention-
ing child sacrifice should be read to mean that in the ancient past, the “correct” or
normative form of the YHVH religion itself may have mandated human sacrifice.