190 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
descending and coming at first in inner troubles, afterwards in the vain giving of
tribute to Assyria, in the revolt, in the covenant war with Syria against Judah and
her neighbors, in the Assyrian invasion, in the breakup of the Galilee region, in
the transportation of a large section of the people to Assyria.” Hosea thus begins
a polemic against state policy, especially the attempt to fend off one great power
by hiring the aid of another, that will culminate in Isaiah.^66
The condemnation of baal worship, which reappears in a new form, is again
read by Buber with an eye toward its political import; the husbandship of YHVH
to the people replaces the husbandship to the land. Even God’s love itself, which
Hosea describes as demanding, wrathful, but merciful, is theopolitically inflect-
ed in Buber’s reading. He notes that “YHVH charges Israel again and again that
they commit whoredom in forsaking Him; but He does not say that He demands
or expects from them that they love Him. Love is not, in the book of Hosea, a con-
cept of reciprocity between God and man.”^67 Why should this be, given the Scrip-
tural command to love God? Buber stresses chesed, that “almost untranslatable
concept... which originally may have signified the right relationship between
a lord and his men, his Hasidim, a relationship of goodwill and loyalty.” When
Hosea complains that there is “no truth, nor chesed, nor knowledge of God in the
land,” he does not mean that the people should show chesed to God, which would
be impossible, but that they should show it to the weak and helpless among them.
As with his tzedek, God wants Israel to receive his chesed and then pass it on to
others. This is what God would expect were Israel to be faithful in its marriage:
“I will betroth thee unto Me forever, I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness
and justice, and in lovingkindness and mercy, and I will betroth thee unto Me in
faithfulness, and thou shalt know YHVH” (Hosea 2:21–22).
In the future redemption that Hosea describes, Israel calls YHVH ishi, “my
man” (baali, another way of saying “my husband,” would be inappropriate), after
they have returned to the wilderness and settled in tents again “as in the days
of the meeting” (12:10). Buber sees an admission on Hosea’s part that although
he too has no “nomadic ideal,” a simpler natural setting is required for the new
covenant. The Israelites fall prey to the mysteries of agricultural fertility as far
back as Baal Peor, and they must return in exile to the wilderness to undo their
misdeeds. Thus “the lawsuit between YHVH and the unfaithful royal house is
here brought to a close by Hosea in Samaria before its fall, as in a later age by
Jeremiah in Jerusalem before its fall.”^68 Here we have, albeit in veiled form, the
first prophecy of a future king. In Hosea 3:3 the prophet says to his wife, “Thou
shalt sit solitary for me many days; thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt
not be any man’s wife, nor will I be thine,” and this applies to Israel as well. Buber
argues that this “is best interpreted as meaning that in this lengthy between-time
Israel will have as king neither YHVH nor His adversary, and will not have a true
representative of God nor one of the authority-usurping princes (and so... there
will be no cult, neither true nor false).”^69 As he did with Amos, Buber takes a verse