Between Pharaohs and Nomads | 135the Israel-Egypt opposition, conceived as a contrast between dynamism and free-
dom on the one hand versus staticism and hierarchy on the other, reproduces
itself here at the level of theology.
Finally, it is worth recalling that for Buber, Moses’ entire mission, as embod-
ied in his most enduring theopolitical contribution, namely the conclusion of the
covenant between God and Israel, can be represented as a critique of Egypt. This
critique is summarized in the so-called eagle speech of Exodus 19:4–6: “You have
seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and
brought you to Me. / Now therefore, if you will indeed hearken unto my voice,
and keep my covenant, then you shall be mine own segula [treasure] from among
all the peoples; for all the Earth is Mine. / And you shall be a kingdom of priests
and a holy nation.”^42 Buber devotes an eight-page chapter to these three verses,
which express as no other text “the theo-political idea of Moses, namely, his con-
ception of the relation between YHVH and Israel, which could not be other than
political in its realistic character, yet which starts from the God and not from the
nation in the political indication of goal and way.” The eagle hovers over the nest
to teach his young how to fly; the bird picks up one that needs special attention
and carries it in his pinions until it can dare the flight itself. “Here we have elec-
tion, deliverance and education all in one.”^43 The word segula, rendered in many
translations as “treasure,” Buber interprets as “a possession which is withdrawn
from the general family property because one individual has a special relation
to it and a special claim upon it.”^44 Such is the people Israel among the family
of nations, if they fulfill the Covenant (“It is impossible to express more clearly
and unequivocally that the liberation from Egypt does not secure the people of
Israel any monopoly over their God”). What is established here is “a prestate
divine state”: the mamlekhet kohanim, the kingdom of priests, who constitute
the new sphere of the rule of the Lord, are those who attend him—his retinue,
but extended to encompass the entire kingdom, each individual in an identically
close relationship to their King. The goy kadosh, the holy nation, suggests that it is
not the behavior of the individual members of the nation that is most important,
but “the behavior of the national body as such. Only when the nation with all its
substance and all its functions, with legal forms and institutions, with the whole
organization of its internal and external relationships, dedicates itself to YHVH
as its Lord, as its melekh, does it become His holy people; only then is it a holy
people.”^45
The historical reality that Buber takes to lie behind these texts is a “chal-
lenge offered by the Hebrew tribes, departing from Egypt into freedom, to Phara-
onism.” The people, freed from slavery, acclaim a leader who refuses leadership.
Their freedom is God’s freedom; God is their king. Buber then recapitulates the
theopolitical thesis of Kingship of God, this time placing a greater emphasis on
justice and law: