GEN559 Genesis [chapter] One tells me that “I” am in the image of God. Genesis [chapter] Nine tells me that “you,” my potential victim, are in the image of God.  Genesis One tells us about human power. We are able, says the Torah, to “rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air” Genesis 1:28. Genesis Nine tells us about the moral limits of power. We can kill but we may not. We have the power, but not the permission. Reading the story [that begins with creation and ends with Noah] closely, it seems that God created humans in the faith that they would naturally choose the right and the good. They would not need to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil because instinct would lead them to behave as they should. Calculation, reflection, decision-all the things we associate with knowledge-would not be necessary. They would act as God wanted them to act, because they had been created in His own image. It did not turn out that way. Adam and Eve sinned, Cain committed murder, and within a few generations the world was reduced to chaos. That is when we read: [this verse]. Everything else in the universe was tov, ”good.” But humans are not naturally good. That is the problem. The answer, according to the Torah, is covenant. Covenant introduces the idea of a moral law. A moral law is not the same as a natural, scientific law. Scientific laws are observed regularities in nature: Drop an object and it will fall. The moral law is a rule of conduct: do not rob or steal or deceive. Scientific laws describe, whereas moral laws prescribe.  When a natural event does not accord with the current state of science, when it “breaks” the law, that is a sign that there is something wrong with the law. That is why Newton’s laws were replaced by those of Einstein. But when a human act breaks the law, when people do rob and steal and deceive, the fault is not in the law but in the act. So we must keep the law and condemn-and sometimes punish-the act. Scientific laws allow us to predict. Moral laws help us to decide. Scientific laws apply to entities without free will. Moral laws presuppose free will. That is what makes humans qualitatively different from other forms of life.  So, according to the Torah, a new era began [i.e., with Noah; the Noahide covenant - AJL], centered not on the idea of natural goodness but on the concept of covenant-that is, moral law.  SACKS 11-12