156 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
authority as that of a shofet, and one set by the editor who, in Buber’s view, inter-
polated 8:1–3 into its present position precisely to dull the meaning of shafat. The
first four occurrences situate Samuel in the line of shoftim familiar to us from
the book of Judges—saviors whose charisma and military prowess indicate their
selection by YHVH for a particular moment. The final two occurrences describe
a request for a melekh, a king, to carry out the function of the shofet. Buber asks
why, if Samuel already fills the shofet office, the elders request a new office to ful-
fill the function of an old one? Even if Samuel and his sons are filling the position
ineffectively, why does he suddenly face a demand for a constitutional overhaul?
To understand the section, Buber argues, we have to separate the first four uses
of shafat from the final two.
The known meanings of the root ש-פ-ט [sh-f-t] according to Buber include
to procure justice for someone, to make justice visible through a decision, and to
demonstrate to one behaving unjustly his injustice. It is clear that of these, the
elders intend the first meaning. The people themselves express this at 8:19–20,
when they say: “Nay! Let a king be over us, so that we may also be like the other
tribes of the earth; let our king shafot us and move out before us and fight our
battles.” If “move out before us” and “fight our battles” are roughly synonymous
expressions, then “shafot us” is to be read through them. The implication is that
Samuel is incapable of being a shofet in this sense, in which he procures the rights
of his people through war.^15 Chapter 7 attempted to attribute military leadership
to Samuel, but Buber points out that even here Samuel’s intervention takes the
form of prayer and response. Yet “successful prayers founded no judgeship in the
sense of the history of the great judges. They were fighters, fighters chosen and
dispatched by God, those he helped... not peaceful supplicants and petition-
ers for wonders.”^16 The elders, then, do not seek the replacement of their current
shoftim. They are frustrated that no shofet has arisen to deliver them from the
Philistines, and therefore seek to establish a continuous authority. Here we have
an instance in which an apparent Leitwort is misleading, and Buber dissects it
critically in order to arrive at the reading he considers to be in accord with the
political and historical context of the core narrative.^17
Elsewhere, Buber’s theopolitical outlook leads him to delete entire verses,
as in his virulent polemic against 1 Samuel 8:8, which he holds to be a “rhetori-
cally impoverished addition by the compiler” that “intolerably weakened, indeed
abolished” its preceding verse, 8:7.^18 How so? In verse 8:6, Samuel is reportedly
displeased with the request of the elders for a king, and prays to YHVH. In verse
8:7, YHVH responds, telling him to hearken unto the people’s voice and to give
them what they ask, while noting that Samuel should not feel that he himself is
being challenged—rather, God’s kingship is what is being rejected. Verse 8:8 then
compares this rejection, in Buber’s view the cardinal moment in Israelite history
since Sinai, to “everything else they have done ever since I brought them out of
Egypt to this day”—thus weakening what he perceives as unique. The words “so