The Battle for YHVH | 197The Third Messiah: A Man of Sorrows, Light to the Nations
in His Deaths, Amazing the Kings
Under the chapter heading “The God of the Sufferers,” The Prophetic Faith brings
together discussions of Micah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Job, Psalm 73, and Deutero-
Isaiah, totaling eighty pages (nearly a third of the entire book). Micah and Jer-
emiah fall under the heading “Against the Sanctuary”; Ezekiel, Job, and Psalm 73
under the heading “The Question”; and Deutero-Isaiah under the heading “The
Mystery.” These divisions are more mysterious than enlightening.^98 The concept
of a God of the sufferers is surely worth examining, but these pages are not pri-
marily aimed at explicating such a concept. Rather, they continue to examine the
faith of Israel historically and to correlate its changing political situation to its
fundamental theopolitical commitments. In the final sections, Buber traces the
relationship of the prophets to the monarchy over the last century of its existence,
and then into the transformations of the Babylonian Exile.
Reform and Destruction: Micah and Jeremiah
The prophet Micah, a younger contemporary of Isaiah, may have been one of
the “disciples” entrusted with continuing the teaching and testimony of Isaiah.
Whereas Isaiah was a Jerusalemite aristocrat, Micah is a villager from the coastal
plain. Lacking Isaiah’s personal connection to the Temple, Micah is able to pro-
claim the inclusion of the sanctuary in the imminent general destruction. Buber
sees Micah as more radical than his teacher. When he criticizes the oppressors of
the poor for “eating the flesh of his people” (Micah 3:3), he speaks as one of these
poor. In Micah’s rebuke to a man who asks whether he should sacrifice his son,
we find the “crystallization of the divine demand”: “It has been told thee, O man,
what is good, and what YHVH requires of you: only to do justice, to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God” (6:8). Finally, the destruction that Micah pro-
claims is complete and does not stop at the borders of the city or the sanctuary.
“Because you feel safe in all this wickedness,” Buber summarizes Micah’s warn-
ing, “the stronghold of your safety shall fall.” Perhaps his uncompromising na-
ture is what gains Micah a hearing with Hezekiah and finally brings the prophets
into the mundane world of political reform.^99 When the king refuses to acknowl-
edge the true prophet, preferring to rely on court prophets and priests who tell
him only to persist on his chosen path, the prophet is assured that his own re-
sponsibility has been fulfilled. When the king seeks to act on the prophet’s words,
however, while misunderstanding their full import, new problems are created.
This is how Buber understands Hezekiah’s cult reform in the wake of Micah’s
prophecy. The cult reform was necessary but insufficient; an effort at social re-
form had to accompany it. This had only scarcely begun when Hezekiah died and
his son Manasseh rose to power. Manasseh’s reign was so pervaded by iniquity
that the book of Kings argues that it is his sins that caused the Babylonian defeat