DEUT468 What is the Torah telling us about morality? First, that it is universal. The Torah places God's covenant with Noah and through him all humanity prior to His particular covenant with Abraham and His later covenant with his descendants at Mount Sinai. Our universal humanity proceeds our religious differences. This may well be the single most important contribution of monotheism to civilisation. All societies, ancient and modern, have had some form of morality but by and large they concern only relations within the group. Hostility to strangers is almost universal in both the animal and human kingdoms. Between strangers, power rules. As the Athenians said to the Melians, "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 5.89) The idea that even the people not like us have rights, and that we should "love the stranger" [this verse], would have been considered utterly alien to most people at most times. It took the recognition that there is one God sovereign over all humanity ("Do we not all have one father? Did not one God create us?"; Mal. 2:10) to create the momentous breakthrough to the principle that there are moral universals, among them the sanctity of life, the pursuit of justice, and the rule of law. (Continued at [[GEN636]] Genesis 8:21 evil SACKS 13-14)