The Battle for YHVH | 207- PF 92.
- Ibid., 93.
- Buber accounts for the difference between the baalim of the fields and the references to
“Baal” as a singular god by noting that “in the more developed Syrian culture,” as revealed by
the Ras Shamra discoveries, “the baalim, spirits lacking individuality, tend to unite into a per-
sonal god called Baal”; ibid., 89. Jezebel and her father (whose name is Et-baal) worship a baal
of this type. This concentration of the numberless fertility powers in a single “lord of heaven
and earth” is part of what makes the “frontal assault on baalism” and its slogan “YHVH vs.
Baal” possible only in Elijah’s time. - Ibid., 95.
- Ibid., 95–96.
- 1 Kings 18:36: “O Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this
day that you are God in Israel.” Presumably Buber highlights the twelve stones to forestall the
interpretation that Elijah is speaking only of the northern kingdom. - Ibid., 97. Buber excuses Elijah from the massacre of the priests of Baal attributed to him
by 1 Kings 18:40, reading it as symbolic of the persecution of the priests and prophets of Baal
carried out by the rebel Jehu, whom Elijah anointed (I Kings 19:16, which Buber considers older
than the contradictory tradition at 2 Kings 9:1–10 that one of Elisha’s servants anointed Jehu). - Ibid., 98.
- Ibid. Buber considers Jeremiah 35:6, where the Rekhavites (descendants of Yehonadav)
claim to have received this tradition from their ancestor, a “precious communication” about
the earlier period. - There are obvious parallels here to Buber’s general politics. In modern terms, this might
amount to a critique of “anarcho-primitivist” rejection of technical civilization and “spiritual”
withdrawal from politics per se. - Ibid., 101. Buber faults Elisha’s followers for settling in common, like the court prophets:
“With Elishah and his ‘sons of the prophets’... the spirit of Elijah had become the possession
of a closed sect”; ibid., 117. The fact that even the noncourt prophets had formed a guild later
prompts the prophet Amos to deny his own prophethood (Amos 7:14). - Ibid., 103.
- Ibid., 128.
- Ibid., 117–118. Buber dates significant portions of the Torah to the reign of Solomon and
the kings immediately following him, in protest of the usurpation of YHVH’s sovereignty.
These include the Deuteronomic “kingship ordinance” (Deuteronomy 17:14–17), as well as
much of the first part of Genesis (through the sacrifice of Isaac). In the remainder of the “Great
Tensions” chapter, Buber analyzes how each episode of the primeval history provides the theo-
logical claim of YHVH’s sovereignty with a narrative history. His interpretation of Genesis,
which reads it as “the great historical document of the struggle for the revelation in the days
before the writing prophets,” whose main lesson is that “man must know that he cannot estab-
lish in earthly life his own regime, man’s regime, and satisfy the power above by cult,” provides
yet another indicator of the primacy of theopolitics as his interpretive lens; ibid., 116. - Ibid., 100.
- Ibid., 155. Buber’s controversial Zionist circle was called “A Covenant of Peace” (Brit
Shalom). - Ibid., 151.
- Ibid., 119–120.
- Ibid., 122–123.
- The concept of ethical monotheism represents “a long tradition of German-Jewish
thought that concluded that Judaism’s particularity represents something of universal sig-
nificance for all of humanity”; Leora Batnitzky, Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy