112 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
its heart. A son of Gideon who escapes Abimelech’s slaughter of the rest of his
brothers, Jotham emerges from hiding at the moment of Abimelech’s coronation
and preaches to the citizens of Shechem. He tells of the trees going to anoint
(limshoach, the same root as moshiach) a king over themselves. One by one, each
tree to which they offer the honor refuses. The olive tree would rather produce its
rich oil, the fig tree its sweet and delicious fruit, the vine its cheering wine. None
wants to give up these useful pursuits “to go and sway above the trees.” Finally,
the thornbush or bramble accepts but warns of dire consequences if the other
trees later change their minds. Buber’s description of this passage is effusive:
The Jotham fable, the strongest anti-monarchical poem of world literature,
is the counterpart of the Gideon passage. Independently of the latter it could
be understood anarchistically [anarchistisch]. Fitted into the strict context it
functions as a keenly realistic illustration of that fundamental manifesto. The
kingship, so teaches the poem... is not a productive calling. It is vain, but
also bewildering and seditious, that men rule over men. Every one is to pur-
sue his own proper business, and the manifold fruitfulnesses will constitute
a community over which, in order that it endure, no one needs to rule—no
one except God alone (so the Gideon speech interprets the doctrine which,
without it, appears to embody a primitive belief in freedom). The “common-
wealth without government” is thought of by the author or the redactor of the
antimonarchical Book of Judges as a commonwealth for which an invisible
government [unsichtbare Obrigkeit] is sufficient.^112For Buber, the Jotham fable makes an even stronger claim than the Gideon pas-
sage considered in isolation. From the simple assertion that anarcho-theocracy is
the way of Israel, we move to the considered rejection of an alternative. Monarchy
has been considered, then found wanting. Buber takes his description of this re-
jection to rhapsodic heights as he details his own longing for true Gemeinschaft,
a perfect combination of individual freedom and collective solidarity, the anar-
chist ideal at its purest, where “no one needs to rule.” Yet Buber adds a twist to the
old anarchist slogan “No gods, no masters.” “One God, no masters.” Instead of no
government whatsoever, which would represent a “primitive belief in freedom,”
he sees the antimonarchical author as calling for an invisible government.^113
In the conclusion to his discussion of the redaction of Judges, Buber offers a
detailed description of the redactor’s worldview and editorial strategy:
The readers received in the totality of the book, in various gradations between
dimness and clarity, an aspect of history... which perhaps corresponded to
the assertion of contemporary historiography that a people in a given epoch
was not ‘ripe’ to actualize a structure intended for it... by its spiritual leaders.
This aspect was supported or corroborated by the fact of the pause, for a time,
between shophet and shophet, thus of a normal ‘interregnum’; a fact which
was inseparable from the institution of the judgeship, as an institution again
and again in an extraordinary period of emergency [Notzeit] resulting, only in