168 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
Saul ignores. As for the passive mass, they bring gifts, but they are unprepared
for war with the Philistines. To overcome their fear, Saul leads his secretly formed
elite guerrilla troops in combat against Nachash and the Ammonites, who have
encamped against Jabesh-Gilead (11:1). This inspires faith in his military prowess
and provides for a full-scale tribal recruitment against the Philistines, with Saul
commanding that “anyone who does not follow behind Saul and Samuel” will
have his oxen cut to pieces (11:7).^67 The call is successful, and “the people came
out as one man” (11:8). The liberation succeeds, and the people, no longer divided,
meet again at Gilgal “to renew the kingship” (11:14).
Samuel and Saul are united in the text of Saul’s call to battle, as they are
throughout the text of Buber’s original narrator, who is “always concerned... to
constantly bring together the anointing one and the anointed.”^68 When Samuel
calls for the people to “renew” the kingship at the end of chapter 11, he is con-
nected with the concept melukhah for the third time (10:16, 10:25, 11:14). Samuel
mediates the sacrament that makes the kingship possible, takes the constitution
of the kingship to the people, and initiates the liberation strategy that cements
the kingship. The Septuagint and the Masoretic text differ over the wording of
11:15b: the MT has Saul and the people rejoicing together, whereas the Septua-
gint has Samuel and the people rejoicing at Saul’s coronation. Buber accepts the
Septuagint’s reading unconditionally, as demonstrating that this narrator has a
vision contrary to that of later editors and redactors:
Samuel, who initially became furious about the desire of the people, has proven
himself, since JHWH has made known to him his decision for the transform-
ing concession, as the faithful servant of his master and his whole-hearted
representative in this matter. The melukha as such, as it has been allocated to
Israel by JHWH, is thus not like that of all the nations, but rather it is charac-
terized through the sense of commission of the anointing, the sense of office
of the nagid-ship, the sense of binding of mishpat; the kingship of the indirect
theocracy as such may not, according to the thought of the narrator, have the
nabi for an adversary.^69Thus in the long struggle within Israel over God’s kingship (a struggle that Buber
says probably began at the same time as “Israel” itself), we have an exception
to the rule that those who believe in the kingship of YHVH oppose the human
monarchy. With the anointing of the first king, we find a narrator who believes,
perhaps idealistically, that indirect theocracy is possible and that the kings can
be faithful to their commissions. From now on, the navi is not a powerless rep-
resentative of YHVH’s will but is included within the power structure. The navi,
the king, and the people, as a united commonwealth, are subject to the rule of
YHVH. At 1 Samuel 12:25, one of the only verses Buber retains for our narrator
without modification, Samuel threatens that if the people and the king do not
hearken to the will of YHVH they will be “swept away”: