GEN1021 Along with the religious injunction to love God and to obey Him, we find in Judaism occasional expressions of the humanist thesis, that the human conscience is the safe source of the ethical imperative. As rational men, we possess the capacity to judge whether actions are right or wrong, apart from the teachings of Divine Revelation. In fact, Abraham dares to take God to account: “Can it be that the judge of earth will not do justice?” [this verse]. Jeremiah sounds this note with even deeper resonance: “Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I complain to thee; yet I would plead my case before Thee. Why is the way of the wicked prosperous?” Jeremiah 12:1  The entire drama of job revolves around this axis—Job cannot and will not surrender the light of his conscience on the altar of the conventional faith that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, and somehow Job is right, while his ”pious” friends are wrong. That the demands of conscience are self-evident and self-validating is the belief that runs like a golden thread through the writings of the classical prophets. It is justice that God wants (Amos), or love (Hosea), or faith (Isaiah), not sacrifices or blind acts of obedience. Micah sums it all up in the saying that God desires us “to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with the Lord. Micah 6:6   This emphasis is conjoined with the daring critique of popular religion in Israel. The Will of God, the prophets insist, cannot be but consistent with our human awareness of right and wrong. Their basic axioms may be as follows: “It is the good that God wills, not the opposite--whatsoever God wills is good.”AGUS 11