Concepts of Scripture in Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig 189in the event, subject (the experiencing human being) meets subject (God,
the ultimate saving Power revealed in the event). For Buber, it is not the
ostensibly supernatural character of the “wonder on the sea”24 that begot
the enthusiasm expressed in the passage. Buber did not expect or desire
that the modern reader inauthentically adopt a belief in the supernatural.
Such a belief would alienate him or her from the categories of science and
history, those prisms by way of which moderns make sense of experience,
including the experience conveyed by ancient texts. It is, rather, the sudden
and unexpected deliverance from the waters at the most crucial time that
Buber saw as a miracle. Th e Israelite people, sensing themselves addressed
by the event, respond with an eff usion of allegiance to the One whom they
perceive as having snatched them from the pursuer. God, the true king,
not Pharaoh, will now be followed on the way. According to Buber and
Rosenzweig, Bible readers who “hear” the “crying out” (mikra)25 of the
voice in the text in response to this event can relive the original sense of
wonder that overwhelmed the people at the time and immediately relate
it to events with a similar structure (sudden reversal in the face of danger)
known in their own experience.
Another example of the kind of authentically and perfectly preserved
spoken texts that Buber claims to have uncovered in the Bible can be found
in the response of Gideon to the people in the book of Judges (8:22 – 23),
when they ask him to “rule” over them. Gideon says there, “I will not rule
(be king) over you and my son will not rule over you, God will rule over
you!” Th e straightforwardness of this statement refl ects a genuine impulse
toward the personal and unmediated rule of God in ancient Israel — an
aspiration to direct theocracy unencumbered by a deadening political or
sacral system.26 Th e one God of all calls for the consecration of all of life
and the bringing of all forms of public and private conduct directly un-
der God’s responsibility and commandedness. For Buber, only response
to this comprehensive call and command can redeem the contemporary
world from its false division into discrete “sacred” and “profane” spheres.
Religion and the fullness of life have become compartmentalized, such that
people can dissemble that they have discharged their “religious” obliga-
tions through established ritual while the rest of life proceeds unaff ected
by responsibility in the presence of the Absolute. Th e living voice of direct
divine “rule” over all of life, then, as echoed through the voice of Gideon in
the biblical text, can and should be experienced as addressing the contem-
porary reader with the same immediacy as in ancient times.
Sometimes, however, the very “literariness” of the text, its textured and