140 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
fashion corresponding to the character of YHVH, that which they had wished to
fashion illegitimately; that is, after a fashion running counter to the character of
YHVH.”^57 This fashion is a throne upon which the king does not always sit; he
comes and goes as he pleases, and he sits there only when he wishes to become
manifest in his function as ruler. The wings of the cherubim extend and touch
one another to form the seat. Against other scholars who connect the imagery of
the cherubim to Babylonia, assuming it symbolizes God’s cosmic nature, Buber
argues that the ark is purely the empty throne for the melekh of Israel. Only much
later, “in the period of the State, when the theopolitical realism succumbed to the
influence of the dynastic principle and the kingship of YHVH was transfigured
and dissipated into a cosmic one lacking all direct binding force, did the nature
symbolism prevail; since the aim then was to abstract living history from the
domain of God.”^58 The effect was not to provide a permanent dwelling for God,
but to represent God’s movement, paradoxically conferring visibility not on the
corporeal presence of God but on his coming and going. Thus, it became possible
for the people to feel that God stayed with them even in battle while also helping
them fulfill his command that they become holy. This was the solution of Moses
to the crisis of the calf, and it lasted until the ark and the tent were later sepa-
rated—first when Israel lost the ark to the Philistines and later when the ark was
brought to the Temple. That later period honored the ark, but so disregarded the
tent that no record tells what became of it; this discrepancy indicates a return of
the errors that first led Moses to build the ark.
Finally, the revolt of Korach represents a third possible misunderstanding of
the theopolitical covenant, alongside the permanent expectation of success (the
murmurers) and the desire to represent and “have” God at all times (the calf).
The people do not have to become holy because the presence of YHVH in their
midst and their being chosen by him mean that they already are holy. Therefore,
whatever they will is blessed by God; in other words, their will can be taken for
God’s will.
Buber entitles this chapter “The Contradiction” because it represents the
most subtle and difficult of Israel’s misunderstandings. It is easy enough to read
the revolt of Korach as a democratic one, seeking to take the teaching of the eagle
speech and render it even more real by removing Moses as the one who seems
to stand above the people. Yet according to Buber, this “converts the words of
Moses into their opposite, changing as it does request and hope into insolent self-
asser t ion.”^59 The very establishment of the ark created the conditions of possibil-
ity for this new misunderstanding. Moses thought that placing the shrine with
the Law tablets at the feet of the ark might remind the people that their freedom
came with duties, but he was unable to overcome the people’s assumption that
God’s presence with them represented prior sanction of their will. Thus, the con-