Martin Buber's Theopolitics

The Arcanum of the Monarchy | 157

they are doing to you” then contradict the previous verse even further by imply-
ing that the request was really a rejection of Samuel’s authority after all:

The theopolitical unity of action which was the unmistakable object of the

accusation in 7b has made way for an irritating binary comparison... the

compiler—perhaps endeavoring for the greater glory of Samuel, by then re-

ceived in the state of historical apotheosis—easily recognizable by his sharply

contrasting rhetorical style from the terseness of the preceding sentences, has

here, arguably without appreciating the scope of his intrusion, obliterated the

basic, great theme of the “biblical Politeia.”^19

For Buber, 8:7 by itself is a great documentary report, but 8:8 drains it of its force,
preventing a proper understanding of Israelite history. From one verse to the
next, the entire Politeia is undone by a pious addition. Buber criticizes not only
the intelligence of some of the biblical editors but also their spiritual stature, as
indicated by his claim that although they are “convinced that they only ‘expound’
what is written,” their “well-meaning intervention” for the sake of narrative unity
is rooted in their effort “not to bear” the tradition, not to trust it.^20
Buber accuses those editors who come after “our narrator,” especially the
compilers of 1 Samuel 12–14, of a panoply of stylistic offenses: “over-hasty pace,”
“undisciplined syntax,” “lax use of completely foreign verbal forms”; their diction
is “derivative,” “vacuous,” “childish,” “imprudent,” “oddly inappropriate,” and
indicates “imitative erosion.”^21 It is no coincidence that they are also politically
benighted, although unlike the last redactors of Judges, they do not represent a
unified party. Our original narrator produces “simple, concise, powerful speech,
worthy of its object and of its narrator, and without a trace of later language,”
and Buber believes that he shares his own concerns about the origin of king-
ship in Israel. He is “the first answerer” to the question of “what it was to be the
a nointed.”^22
The foregoing is but an exemplary selection of biblical verses illustrating
how Buber’s theopolitical commitments and his scholarly analysis dovetail in
The Anointed. A final example: from the twenty-five verses of 1 Samuel 12, Buber
keeps ten, and many of these only in a shortened form. These verses comprise
two short addresses of Samuel to the people following the installation of Saul as
king of Israel. In the first (1 Samuel 12:1–5), Samuel acquits himself of wrongdoing
before ceding authority to Saul.^23 Here, for the first time, he refers to Saul as “the
anointed of YHVH.” In the second address, containing parts of verses 13, 14, 15,
24, and 25, Buber has Samuel delivering this message to the people:

And now, there is the king whom you have wished for, there, YHVH has set a

king over you. / Therefore fear YHVH and hear his voice, so you may live, both

you and the king, who according to YHVH your God became king over you. /

But if you do not hear YHVH’s voice, then will the hand of YHVH be against

you and against your king. / Only fear YHVH! For see, such great things he