202 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
and will finally fulfill the goal of its election: “YHVH’s hallowing by Israel, that is
to say, the establishment of His holy kingdom by the people hallowed by Him.”^120
The human agent of this process, however, is problematic. The Persian king
Cyrus the Great defeats Babylon and repatriates Judah and thereby earns for him-
self the title “anointed of God,” messiah, from DI, who admires his achievements
(Isaiah 45:1). Later, however, DI is disillusioned with Cyrus, who continually pro-
claims himself the chosen one of their god to all the peoples he repatriates. DI
therefore mounts a polemic against all these gods, declaring YHVH alone to be
the lord of history and becoming in the process the true “originator of a theol-
ogy of world-history.”^121 YHVH is capable of leading the nations, just as he leads
Cyrus who does not “know Him” in the way that Israel does (45:6). This much
Amos had already declared, but DI asserts that one day the nations will know
him as their liberator, and all peoples will be called “YHVH’s people” and will
recognize that all justice and liberty in world affairs flow from YHVH and from
nowhere else. As DI’s teacher, Isaiah, said, Israel will serve YHVH by preparing
and readying themselves for this stage of redemption.
The “suffering servant,” however, to whom Buber turns, cannot simply be
Israel as a collective.^122 This is a classical Jewish opinion, to be sure, but it has
never been unanimous, because there are textual problems with this as a “solu-
tion” to the “problem” of the servant’s identity.^123 The detailed account of the ser-
vant’s death, and references to his past actions, complicates efforts to identify the
servant with a particular individual. Buber’s analysis, tracing minute linguistic
connections between the figures of Israel, Cyrus, and the servant (e.g., both Israel
and the servant are fashioned by YHVH “from the womb,” whereas both Israel
and Cyrus are “called by name”), concludes that the servant acts as a successor
figure to both Israel and Cyrus. The servant, like Cyrus, is anointed and charged
with a task, which, though the same as Israel’s, he will accomplish where Isra-
el failed. The “former things” against which DI frequently sets up the “coming
things” or the “new things” are Isaiah’s prophecies of the child and the “shoot of
Jesse”; these he interprets as fulfilled by Cyrus, who has done the work of liberat-
ing the people, and by the servant, who “does not smite except with the rod of his
mouth, and does not slay the wicked except with the breath of his lips (11:4).” But
since Cyrus has attempted to take glory from YHVH by attributing his victories
to other gods as well, the “hour of the king of Persia, who has liberated Israel
from the yoke of Babylon, passes away and the hour of the ‘servant’ begins, he
who attends to YHVH’s ‘desire’ to redeem the world of the nations from the yoke
of its guilt.”^124 This servant may initially be Israel (41:8), but soon Israel is rejected
again (42:18) and replaced by an alternative, anonymous servant.
The servant thus claims the leadership of Israel, according to a new inter-
pretation of an old leadership style. “David’s throne (9:6) man shall no more sit
upon; the ‘faithful graces (promised) to David (53:3) pass over to Israel (“to you”);