The Battle for YHVH | 193contrary to that one such relationship which is true; but at the same time it is
unsuitable from a political point of view also, because it involves the people in
other nations’ wars of expansion, in wars liable to rob the people of its inde-
pendence and finally to destroy it, especially when, as with little Israel, it has
to live between two great powers.^81There are unmistakable echoes here of the situation of “little Israel” in the 1940s:
of Buber’s own polemics against Zionist alignment with the British Empire, and
of his hope for Jerusalem as a third option vis-à-vis the ideologies of the “two
great powers” of his time.^82 Buber held, “He who has dealings with the powers
renounces the power of powers, that which bestows and withholds power, and
loses its help; whereas he who confides and keeps still thereby gains the very po-
litical understanding and strength to hold his ground.”^83 There may even be an
echo of Buber’s debates with the Zionists in Isaiah’s meditation on speed: “The
unbeliever demands acceleration of God’s actions and mocks His slowness, as
Isaiah related earlier (5:19), for he, the politician, cannot wait... the true believer
does not wish to hasten God’s work, the work of salvation, even if he could. Small
politics is a monologue of man; great politics is a discourse with the God Who
‘keeps still.’”
The remainder of Isaiah’s political memoir contains some of the most con-
troversial verses in the history of scriptural interpretation. The sign, the maiden,
the child, Immanuel—these perennial topics of Jewish and Christian exegetical
disputation are here treated as part of Isaiah’s theopolitical manifesto. To be sure,
Buber contests some well-known interpretations in support of his version of the
narrative. The ot, or sign, for which Ahaz is permitted to ask, and which he refus-
es, does not indicate a miracle; the almah or young woman who will give birth is
none other than his own young queen. The birth of a son to a king who passed his
previous son through the fire (2 Kings 16:3) is the sign that Ahaz is given against
his will. Isaiah states further that this son will become king and will fulfill Ahaz’s
neglected theopolitical commission and be called Immanuel, “God-with-us.” Bu-
ber interprets the other epithets of Immanuel similarly:
“counsellor of the valiant God” (that is, of the God as leading the battle), “fa-
ther of the spoil” (this spoil is the world of peoples delivered from the “rod” of
the Assyrian tyrant), and “prince of peace” (that is, of the “peace that has no
end”... which in the later prophecy of Isaiah is pictured in the image of the
peace of the animals, 11:6–9).^84These are the three stages of salvation: war, victory, and peace. These titles belong
not to a divine figure but to the true anointed one who stands over and against
the one who defiles the title:
“Immanuel” is the anti-king but not “a spiritual anti-king,” as some explain
it, for the fulfilling, the messianic kingship too is a real, political kingship, or