But that is exactly my question: how do we know these are metaphors if it says He has hands, feet, a face, anger, a sense of smell, etc.?

Maimonides testifies that in his time people who were considered among the greatest sages thought that God has a body and bodily form, and they defined anyone who thought God has no body as a heretic. So apparently this issue is not all that self-evident from the Torah?

I didn’t say it was self-evident. I said it follows from reason, and from that I infer that it is likely these are metaphors.
By the way, it’s the Raavad who writes that.

And even if someone thought He has a body, it is still an undefined statement. What material is it made of? Is it in human form (hands, feet, heart, blood)?

A follow-up question: you arrive by reason at the conclusion that He has no body, time, place, or emotions like human beings, because He created all these things, so it makes sense not to attribute them to Him.

In The First Existent you explain that the religious commandments stem from the assumption that if someone creates something, he wants something from it, because that’s how human beings work.

But God also created human desires, so why is it דווקא this desire that you do attribute to Him? Could one just as well attribute to Him love, hatred, fear, jealousy, and all the other human emotions and desires?

The term “desire” is misleading. I didn’t say He has a desire, but that creation has a reason. Any being of any kind that does something presumably has a purpose. Anyone claiming otherwise bears the burden of proof.

When you say “any being of any kind,” you mean beings that God created. Our experience is limited only to beings He created, and those beings behave in such a way that if they do something, it probably has a purpose.
But according to that same experience I have, every being of any kind also has a body, time, and place.

That brings me back again to the same question: why is one particular characteristic of beings created by God a characteristic that is projected onto Him as well, while for other characteristics that are true of all beings, you conclude by reason that they are not true of Him?

As Hume showed, causality is not a product of experience but of a priori thought.

I don’t recall Hume talking about purpose; that’s already your interpretation, isn’t it?
There is a difference between claiming that everything that happens has a cause that brought it about, and claiming that everything any being does has a purpose…

According to Hume, if I see someone kick a ball and the ball flies, I assume a priori that the kick is what sent the ball flying. But to assume that the person who kicked the ball had a purpose in making the ball fly is already an additional assumption.
And that still doesn’t really answer what I asked—
You say that you project our experience onto the Creator unless proven otherwise.

Our experience says that every composite thing has components, but with regard to the Creator that leads to a logical failure,
so one can assume that He has no components.

Our experience says that every being that does something probably has a purpose, so the Creator also has a purpose if He created something.

Our experience says that every being also has a body, time, place, and a desire to reproduce. On what basis did you rule those out regarding the Creator?

I’ve exhausted this. Everything has been answered.

It seems to me that you get exhausted pretty quickly, and it’s not clear…
You decide that God has no body, form, emotions, time, or place, but that if He does something then He has a purpose, and it’s not clear why.
Every being that was ever created had a body, form, time, and place. And still, with regard to the Creator you decide that because He created, these do not apply to Him.
As for “purpose” — I don’t know for certain that every living being has a purpose in the actions it performs, but I do know that every living being has time and place — and you still prefer to project “purpose” onto God. Not clear.