GEN18 The idea of creation as an act of grace is not so much the warrant as the equivalent of our core claim, identifying the being with the desert of things.  For being is an expression of divine creativity manifested in, and upon, the recipients of grace.  It was in keeping with such a conception that the school of R. Ishmael framed their question about the purpose of the world’s existence as a quest for deserts: For whose sake – “for whose merit does the world exist?” Why does God bother, why create or sustain the world? Their answer: “For the merit of the righteous” Midrash ha-Gadol, Gen. 3, II. 11-13; c.f. B. Shabbat 119b; B. Yoma 38b, glossing [this verse].  Or, generalizing: For the good that it contains, for the sake of the beings, which is to say, for God’s glory.  JHRHV 43