The Arcanum of the Monarchy | 173- SM 302.
- See sources cited in Michael Walzer and Menachem Lorberbaum, eds., The Jewish Po-
litical Tradition, vol. 1, Authority (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 147–155. - SM 288.
- Ibid., 289.
- Buber relates this use of mishpat to that found at Judges 13:12, when Samson’s father
Manoah asks the angel who announced that Samson would be born what the mishpat, the
rule, of the child should be once the word comes to pass. Here it clearly means instructions—
“roughly the ‘rule [Richte],’ the ‘guideline [Richtschnur].’” - 1 Samuel 10:25 reads: “Then Samuel told the people the mishpat ha-melukha, and wrote
it in a book, and laid it up before YHVH. And Samuel sent all the people away, every man to
his house.” There is still the problem that 8:9 is often read as containing an instruction from
YHVH to Samuel to “warn” the people what the king will do. Buber denies that ha’ed ta’ id in
8:9 should be read as “warn,” but argues that “ha’ed with be implies that a solemn testimony is
erected, facing a partner, for an explanation that was or is to be delivered in respect to him.”
Ibid., 290. - Ibid., 291.
- This point provides another textual consideration leading Buber to eliminate the ver-
sion of the mishpat ha-melekh found at 8:11–18: In 8:18 Samuel says that “the day will come
when you will cry out because of the king whom you have chosen yourselves.” To Buber this
reads like a polemic against 10:24: “Have you seen him, whom YHVH has chosen?” The people
desire a king, but YHVH elects this king. - I highlight only central narrative elements; Buber, however, discusses everything from
the lands through which Saul searches for the missing donkeys, to the conversation with his
servant about the “seer” who lives in the city, to the chatter of the girls at the well, and so on. - SM 327.
- Ibid., 303. However, here again I translate from the 1965 edition, for which Buber
changed buntfarbige (colorful) to the more narrative-centric märchenfarbige; Buber, We r-
ke II, 753. - SM 352.
- Ibid. Buber considers the anointing of David by Samuel, reported at 1 Samuel 16:13, to be
a literarily dubious “idealized repetition of the Saulish” anointing, and he holds David’s two
public anointings by the people, reported at 2 Samuel 2:4 and 3:5, to lack prophetic sanction. - Ibid., 353.
- SM 314.
- Ibid., 313.
- Ibid., 319.
- Buber notes that between Samuel and Elisha we encounter no prophets with patronyms,
and entertains the proposal that the word navi led to a “joke of a folk-etymology,” en-avi, or
“fatherless.” - Ibid., 322.
- Buber strikes 10:8, in which Samuel issues orders to go to Gilgal and wait seven days for
him to arrive to sacrifice, from the original narrative, holding it to be an interpolation by the
author of 13:7b–15a. The interruption of the charismatic empowerment with a new order to wait
recalls the “theopolitical hour” of Isaiah and Ahaz in PF, in which the prophet as the voice of
YHVH denies the human sovereign the right to claim mastery of the logic of war. However,
for this reason Buber denies it to this narrator, who is not of a late prophetic school but an
early one. - Ibid., 317.