164 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
Finally, there is the matter of the mishpat ha-melekh, the “law of the king,”
which God orders Samuel to read to the people at 8:9. In the final version of
1 Samuel, verses 8:11–18 constitute Samuel’s fulfillment of this order; he enu-
merates royal prerogatives and privileges (e.g., “he will take your sons and ap-
point them unto him for his chariots”), concluding with the dire prediction
“You shall cry out on that day because of your king whom you have chosen
yourselves, and YHVH shall not answer you on that day.” For the traditional
Jewish antimonarchical exegesis mentioned earlier, Samuel clearly warns the
people that they should give up their request or suffer terrible royal outrages.
For supporters of the divine right of kings throughout history, though, these
words make up a perfectly reasonable list of divinely conferred royal powers.
In a sense, Buber agrees with both positions. He grants to the Jewish exegetical
tradition that 8:11–18 creates the impression that Samuel is warning the people
against monarchy, but then he denies the originality of 8:11–18, holding it to be a
Deuteronomist interpolation. And he agrees with the absolutists that the phrase
mishpat ha-melekh in 8:9 refers to the way or customs of the king.^49 But—and
this is the most important move of the argument—since Buber denies that 8:9
is followed by 8:11–18, Samuel does not fulfill the command to tell the people
the “way of the king” until 10:25, where it is called the mishpat ha-melukha,
“way of the kingship,” and where we are not informed of the content of Sam-
uel’s speech.^50 Buber fills in the blank by surmising that Samuel conveys the
nature of the new constitutional order: the melekh is to be the new commis-
sioned one, responsible to God and prophet to do justice. The mishpat is “the
rule which should apply to the appointed king, the command of law to him, his
legal binding.” In this sense it is a constitution from above rather than below;
it is adopted by YHVH to oblige the king to him, and it contains “indeed no
individual duties, needing only just to include the fundamental definition of
this accountability.”^51 Such an obligation contains a warning, but not one to the
people about the king—it is to the people and the king together that Samuel
sends warning that they should not misconstrue themselves as “like all the na-
tions,” as they originally requested. YHVH does not really intend to empower
someone to “nominate themselves as vicariate of God, but not in reality owe ac-
countability to heaven and report to it, but rather real responsibility to the top,
a governorship deposable by the top, ‘rejectable’ by the top. So does the narra-
tor understand the foundation of the Israelite melukha as the passage from the
direct rulership of God to the indirect.” The navi will retain an important role
as a check on the power of the king, who will be a mere governor for YHVH.
Thus the people both get what they want and are refused it; thus Samuel comes
around from his initial rejection of the project to support for it. He is prepared
to receive instruction concerning the man whom YHVH, and not he himself,
will elect to the kingship.^52