EXOD1033 What is the nature of the obligatoriness of morality? Why should a person be moral? We indicated earlier that God is the source of the moral commands in the Bible. How shall we understand this? Does it mean that a certain rule is to be deemed moral because God has ordained it, or does it mean the reverse, that God ordains certain rules because they embody moral principles? The latter would appear to be the case in as much as the Torah identifies the "ways" of God by appealing to well-known and apparently approved moral traits. When the "Glory of God" is revealed to Moses, only moral attributes are listed, such as "mercy, long–suffering, and kindness" [this verse]. This would suggest that morality is prior to our knowledge of God not only in an epistemological sense but in an axiological sense as well. But insofar as man can know the essence of God's being, if what he gets to know is a moral essence, then morality would appear to be, in some sense, divine. Morality, therefore becomes obligatory for man, not because of the arbitrary fiat of Divine legislation but because morality, whose value in obligatoriness man has always dimly perceived, is now identified with God, who is absolute value, the prototype of all morality. (Y. Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, trans. M. Greenberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 327) In a sense, God has no choice but to ordain moral rules. The moral God cannot command rules that are not moral. "You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." (Leviticus 19:2) Similarly, because He is moral, you should be moral. It is because of this logic that Abraham with complete confidence is able to confront God with a demand for justice: "Shall not the judge of all the earth do justly?" (Genesis 18:25) The ultimate purpose of man is to be moral but morality is divine. Hence, the ultimate purpose of man is to become like God, to seek fellowship with Him. One can start at the other end and come to the same conclusion. Man ought to seek self-fulfillment, but he is created in the image of God. Let him, therefore, strive to be merciful and righteous. It is in this unique concept of God as possessing a moral nature that there lies the key to our understanding of the grounds of the morality of Judaism.