194 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
rather a theopolitical one, that is to say, it is a kingship endowed with politi-
cal power to the scope of the political realization of God’s will for people and
peoples—no other view is held by Isaiah or by any other prophet of the period
of the monarchy. Immanuel is the king of the remnant, from which the people
will renew itself.^85This messiah is a king from the house of David who fulfills the promise of David’s
last words, that of “the right ordering of the people—and radiating from it the
right ordering of the world.”^86 His reign is not eschatological but historical. He
could be the very next king, or the one after that. “The original Messianic faith
has no reference to ‘the Messiah’ in the sense of a special category: the man,
whose absence is felt, the expected, the promised, he is the anointed king, who
fulfills the function assigned to him at his anointing. There is no need for more
than this.”^87 His royal code is not merely to avoid the overt violation of the Deu-
teronomic and Samuelic “kingship ordinance,” but to worship YHVH by imitat-
ing him. The prescription for this imitation appears, according to Buber, in the
prayer of Hannah at 1 Samuel 2, as well as in Psalm 72, which Buber dates to Isa-
iah’s time. The king is to raise the poor out of the dust and seat them with the no-
bles; to vindicate the oppressed; to crush the oppressor; to “guard the feet of his
Hasidim, but the wicked shall be put to silence in darkness, for not by strength
shall man prevail” (1 Samuel 2:9).^88 The paradox of freedom, however, which held
for the entire people in the days of the anarcho-theocracy and which still holds
true for it with respect to the turning in the face of catastrophe, applies as well to
the individual kings. Each anointed one is free to accept or reject God’s will and
the word of the prophets. “The ‘Messianic’ prophecy too conceals an alternative.
This too is no prediction, but an offer. The righteous one, whom God ‘has,’ must
rise out of this historic loam of man.” Thus, it is simultaneously possible for the
prophecy of Immanuel to refer to Ahaz’s son Hezekiah and for Hezekiah not to
fulfill the prophecy: “The prophecy remains in substance, but the reference to a
particular man is suspended.”^89
Isaiah’s disappointment with Hezekiah, who succumbs to alliance politics
with Egypt against Assyria, is the occasion for his second messianic song, 11:1–9.
Buber denies that this song refers to the same person as the song of Immanuel.
A fundamental shift has taken place: “Isaiah no longer acknowledges the rul-
ing dynasty.”^90 The royal house is destroyed, reduced to a stump, and the new
king emerges from the remnant, from the “rootstock” of Jesse rather than the
branches of the felled tree. Isaiah reverts to an old trope of prophetic authority,
emphasizing the “spirit” that comes from YHVH to endow the future king with
wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and fear of YHVH. Even
here, in the image of the wolf dwelling with the lamb, Buber denies that there is
an eschatological transformation of the cosmos: “It seems to me that this idyll
of the beasts of prey ‘staying’ with the domestic animals is intended merely as