104 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
which begins with the downfall of the Egyptian pursuing army and ends with the
entrance of the ark into the recently conquered Jerusalem.... [T]he JHWH-war
is the war of the melekh Who fulfills His promise.”^79 It refers to the concerted ac-
tion of all the separate tribes, in common purpose, in pursuit of a goal ordered by
YHVH and under the command of YHVH.
Thus it becomes easier to understand Buber’s view that “for the expression of
the theocratic idea, the book of Joshua is indeed only a trough between Moses and
Judges-Samuel.”^80 He has a similar view of Joshua himself, “whom we glimpse in
shadowy fashion, but like the real shadow of a real person”; he holds that Joshua
lacked Moses’ inherent understanding of the theopolitical task to which YHVH
had committed them. Allowing himself to imagine the psychological state of this
“real shadow of a real person,” Buber engages in some creative exegesis:
He is a military man, and he is pious. A theopolitical founder has trained him
and has committed him to his work, a theopolitical work, to be continued. He
has continued it; he has never felt the theopolitical ardor of his master. The
political expression of the theocracy, its only political expression, has been
for him the JHWH-war, and this is now at an end. The community led by the
charismatic person was necessary for the sake of victory; now it is no longer
necessary. He needs to name no successor; the office is disposed of.... Outside
of the JHWH-war he understands the theocracy in a purely religious fashion,
and he gives it a purely religious description [at the assembly at Shechem].^81Buber’s theopolitical principles are at work in this disdainful understanding of
the human need to view divinity as bound primarily to war and victory. Thus
Buber refers to Joshua’s “purely religious” covenant at Shechem as a “reduction”
of theocracy. Joshua emphasizes cultic centralization around a primary sanctu-
ary and attends far less to the political centralization around the invisible king.
Joshua considers the YHVH war the tribal confederation’s central project, and
when that project is completed, he does not think the confederation has any more
to do. Nor does he transfer the charis to a successor. For Buber, this explains the
lack of a succession crisis following Joshua’s death. Joshua dissolves the confed-
eration, apportions lots to the tribes, and assumes that they can manage their
own business without a central leadership.
Joshua’s death “strips theocratic reality of its severe garments of power: now
it is surrendered unarmed to the freedom of man,” and battle lines are drawn
around theocracy itself. Only in the absence of charismatic leadership appears
“the kind of man for whom really ‘nothing remains but the countenance of his
King’; the King which stands on alert for a kingly covenant which now dispenses
with an earthly executive.”^82 Buber refers to this moment as the “second stage” in
the history of direct theocracy, when a community emerges “whose nature is only
to be surmised by us.” Now the problematic of anarcho-theocracy first arises.^83
In response to difficulties besetting tribal unity, theocratic leadership, and the
incomplete YHVH war, “there arises in the passion of the spirit an association of