166 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
hidden, but when Samuel pours oil over Saul’s head at 10:1, and kisses him, and
asks “Is it not that YHVH has anointed you to be nagid over his own?” the speech
appears to conclude. Buber notes two changes in the phrasing from 9:16, when
YHVH told Samuel he would send him a Benjaminite whom he should anoint
“to be nagid over my people Israel.” The first is that “my people Israel” is replaced
with nachalato, “his own” or “his inheritance”; Buber reads this as increasing the
emphasis on YHVH’s retained sovereignty even after the anointing. The second
is that this time YHVH is said to have anointed Saul personally, concretizing the
theopolitical character of the act. Buber argues that the first anointing, far more
than any subsequent one, concentrates all “the pathos which inheres in the con-
cept of the anointed king in biblical history and biblical prophecy.”^56 Saul is called
“anointed of YHVH” ten times, David only twice, and only the Saulid instances
exemplify the essential trait of anointing, its “sacral inviolability.”^57
The anointing, however, because it is a secret ceremony, takes place only be-
tween YHVH, Samuel and Saul. It is insufficient on its own to install Saul in pow-
er; there are several further stages through which he must pass before he truly
becomes the melekh. Nonetheless, the anointing must precede these other stages:
the transformation of Saul’s heart and his seizure by the Spirit, which make him
“into another man,” would on their own render him a navi; the successful pros-
ecution of the liberation war would on its own make him a shofet. However, our
narrative is about the rise of a new category in Israel, and Saul cannot be either of
these preexisting types of figure:
Melekh is biblically something different from shophet, and therefore a categor-
ically different event must be preceded by a categorically different action....
When it comes to the case of Saul, were he too only a shophet... then neither
the sacral basis nor the mark of mystery would have been his, and there would
have resulted no meschiach JHWH and no messianism.^58The anointing is not sufficient, but it is necessary. Yet Buber reminds us that the
narrator places as much emphasis on who does the anointing as who is anointed:
it is the navi, in his function as proclaimer of YHVH’s will, who anoints Saul
nagid, and only because he has done this can there be a melukha and its attendant
mishpat.
But Saul remains unknown to most of Israel; he must still come to power.
Samuel announces that Saul will encounter three signs on his way home, and
they come to pass, conveying that “here a people comes towards its unknown
k ing.”^59 The third and most important sign is the only one that is both predict-
ed and reported. Saul encounters a proclaiming band of nevi’im, and “in this
moment the ruach of JHWH invades him, transforming him, and he proclaims
along with the proclaimers.... The gift of the Spirit is not separated from human
categories. Like the old schophtim, so must the anointed, before he can operate
as commander, be prepared and inwardly held by the low-roaring power, but this