How is God's covenant with the Israelites related to the Jewish teachings of ethics and justice?

Answer 1

The Jewish teachings of ethics and justice are part of the covenant itself, since the full document of the covenant is the Torah itself. This is why it is called the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 24:7, 2 Kings ch.23).

Israelite society was based upon the covenant, as set forth in the Torah (Exodus ch.19, Deuteronomy 26:16-19). A portion of each day was spent praying; and a larger part of the day was spent studying Torah (by a good part of the populace).
Having a large family was an ideal, as was welcoming guests into the home, giving charity, and many other forms of kindness.

• The concept of morality was founded by the Hebrew religion, including the dignity and value of every person. It is the responsibility of the community to support the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger passing through. Compare this to other ancient societies in which only mature, land-owning male citizens had rights.

• Practicing kindness and avoiding dishonesty became obligatory instead of merely proper.

• Agriculture in the Holy Land included tithes to be given to the Levites and Kohens, thus providing for a scholarly class of people. One of the tithes was given to the poor, thus obviating the existence of starvation.
  
• Immorality and incest were legislated against in detail. Instead of instinct or "crimes against nature," they were subsumed into religious law.

• The roles of king, prophet, Kohen, Levite, officers and judges were all provided for in the Torah, thus defining the shape of the society and its institutions and providing certain balances.

Government became accountable to a higher authority. In other ancient societies, the monarch was all-powerful. Among the Israelites, however, the king was under the constant scrutiny of the Divinely-informed prophets, who didn't hesitate to castigate him publicly for any misstep in the sight of God. And, other than for the crime of rebellion, the king couldn't punish any citizen by his own decision. He was obligated by the Torah-procedures like everyone else (Talmud, Sanhedrin 19a).

• Under the law of Judaism, everyone had recourse to the courts. A child, widow, wife, poor person, etc., could initiate legal action against any citizen to redress perpetrated harm.

• A robber repays double to his victim, or works it off. Unlike other ancient societies, in Judaism debtors are not imprisoned or harmed. They are made to sell property and/or work to repay what they owe. Compare this to the Roman practice by which anyone could accuse a man of owing them money and the debtor could be killed (Roman Twelve Tables of Law, 3:10).

• The judges were commanded to fear God (Exodus 18, Deuteronomy 1), instead of relying on their skills of jurisprudence alone.

• The laws of the Tabernacle (and later the Holy Temple), and commands to love God and fulfill all of the commandments, were written in the Torah together with (and mixed among) the seemingly mundane laws of restitution, testimony and witnesses (etc.), in order to convey the message that for us it is all part of religion. Secular life was a foreign concept. For example, a shopkeeper would be constantly aware of the religious laws of maintaining honest scales, giving a tithe to the poor (maaser kesafim), not overcharging, returning lost objects left behind, etc.; and he would set aside times for the daily prayers.
  

The above are just a few examples.

Quote:

"I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation ... fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations" (John Adams, 2nd President of the United States).

"Certainly, the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place. Humanity might have eventually stumbled upon all the Jewish insights, but we cannot be sure. All the great conceptual discoveries of the human intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they had been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jews had this gift. To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both Divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person; of the individual conscience and of the collective conscience and social responsibility" (Paul Johnson, Christian historian, author of A History of the Jews and A History of Christianity).

Answer 2

For our part, the keeping of God's covenant with us entails keeping the Torah, which includes its teachings and commands concerning ethics and justice.

Answer 3

ye