274 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
constellation of societies in which the holders of what elsewhere would be called
power are actually without power; where the political is determined as a domain
beyond coercion and violence, beyond hierarchical subordination; where... no
relationship of command-obedience is in force.”^140 Clastres criticizes Western
ethnography for its question-begging treatment of “archaic” societies as “without
power”; this presupposes political power as already identified with the relation of
command and obedience and the attendant violence of that relation. In Clastres’s
wider perspective, political power is universal and can take forms other than
domination. The question then becomes, “What causes domination?” We might
even ask why anyone ever believed in divine-right monarchy at all. This is a ques-
tion that theopolitics claims to answer.
Buber’s theopolitical history of Israel enfolds into it an explanation of the
transition from noncoercive to coercive power. Buber is closer to classical West-
ern political theory than to Clastres’s anthropology, since he conceives of anar-
chic freedom as a difficult struggle rather than presupposing it as an ordinary
state in which many societies persist in a relatively untroubled way.^141 Nonethe-
less, Buber provides a clear account of the rise of systematic coercion and vio-
lence in Israelite society, which shares elements with Landauer’s Revolution and
Oppenheimer’s The State. The tribes fail to overcome a military threat through
uniting as in the past. Meanwhile, corruption of the nondynastic principle opens
a door for the institution of a human dynasty. The warrior capable of repelling
the enemy is offered the kingship. Previous victorious generals refused such a
position, but years of oppression under foreign powers have weakened the un-
derstanding of freedom in divine sovereignty that made those refusals possible.
Initially, the human king is a mere viceroy of YHVH, the true king; his power is
checked by the prophets who speak in the divine name. But the kings soon bring
about a secularization that precludes the involvement of YHVH in politics except
through the king’s mediation, authorized by the new political theology of sover-
eignty. The de facto secularization is covered up through the royally sponsored
Temple cult. The prophets denounce the kings and the Temple, foretelling the
appearance of a good king who will carry out his function, but they achieve only
minimal concessions, frequently being ignored or harassed unto death. Eventu-
ally, the monarchy fails to achieve even the very purpose for which it was insti-
tuted, the defense of Israel, and collapses in ignominy. At this point, some recall
that Israel once had the wisdom to avoid the monarchical adventure completely,
but others indulge in a nostalgic vision of past sovereign glory. A future king is
imagined who will restore this glory to defeated Israel: the Messiah.
The Bible records this sorry tale, and the kingship psalms and exaltation of
the Davidic line cannot completely erase the fact that the monarchy was born of
fear and weakness and died in disgrace and dishonor. Following the dismal ca-
reer of the Second Commonwealth, and the failed revolt against Rome, it was pri-