The human expectation of justice often clashes with the reality we see. The sight of reversed fates, where good people suffer and bad people succeed, presents a deep philosophical challenge and creates a feeling that the world lacks order. This baffling and alarming reality takes place in our physical, visible world, where events simply do not unfold as they should [רש״י, צאינה וראינה, מצודת דוד, ביאור שטיינזלץ].
The primary approach among commentators is that the direct link between a person's actions and their consequences appears broken. Righteous individuals endure suffering that should rightfully belong to the wicked, while the wicked enjoy the success and goodness that the righteous have earned [מצודת דוד]. This distortion of justice feels absurd. It severely tests human faith, carrying the real danger of despair and spiritual collapse when people envy the prosperity of wrongdoers [אבן עזרא, ביאור שטיינזלץ].
There is, however, a spiritual purpose in hiding true justice: it preserves free will. If God delivered immediate rewards and punishments, humans would become programmed creatures forced to do good, and the reward of the righteous would lose its value. Yet, the situation remains frustrating. In practice, when people witness the wicked succeeding, they become discouraged, and their motivation to pursue justice fades [מצודת דוד].
Contrasting with this focus on the present world, another perspective shifts the view to an eternal reckoning. From this angle, the suffering of good people is not a failure of justice, but a process of clearing debts for their few minor mistakes, ensuring their future reward is absolute and complete. Conversely, the success of the wicked is merely God paying them off for their rare good deeds in this world, ultimately excluding them from eternal life. Through this lens, the reality flips: the righteous who suffer now are fortunate, and the wicked who prosper now are tragic, as they are actively losing their true existence [תורה תמימה].
A completely different approach removes the focus from rewards and punishments entirely, looking instead at human behavior. Because of the complex struggle between purity and impurity in the world, righteous individuals sometimes fail, committing severe sins typically associated with the wicked. At the same time, wicked people occasionally perform noble acts usually reserved for the righteous. According to this view, the true absurdity is the deep wonder and difficulty in understanding why God allows the righteous to stumble in sin, rather than protecting them from failure [תעלומות חכמה].