GEN993 The goal of [Torah] law … is not to secure rights, as it is in American law, but rather to follow God’s will and gain the physical and spiritual rewards for doing so. As Maimonides later states this, the aim of God’s law is to create a good society, one that contributes to the welfare of the body and mind of all its inhabitants through the duties it imposes.   Guide for the Perplexed, part III, chap. 27. That theologically centered goal embodies in it the ultimate Messianic mission of Jewish law – to create a world in which swords are beaten into plowshares and in which there is no poverty, a world in which “God will instruct us in His ways and we will walk in His paths” Isaiah 2:2-4. What are God’s paths? In arguing with God about Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham already appeals to God’s justice and faithfulness [this verse], and God later describes Himself as merciful and loyal Exodus 34:5-7. Moses similarly proclaims that God is pure, that “all His ways are just, a faithful God, never false [without evil], true and upright [righteous and honest] is He” Deuteronomy 32:4 Later, Maimonides, following the lead of [this verse], summarizes all of the divine characteristics as justice and righteousness and maintains that those who emulate God in acting in accordance with those divine characteristics “bring goodness and blessing to themselves.” M.T. Laws of Ethics (De’ot) 1:7. See also M.T. Laws of Slaughter 14:16 and M.T. Laws of Shemitah and Yovel (Cancellation of Debts in the Sabbatical Year and the Jubilee) 13:13, in both of which Maimonides identifies “the ways of God” not as the commandments themselves but as the paths of righteousness. DORFFLGP 9