The belief that Divine justice will reward the righteous and punish the wicked. In the Pentateuch, God appears as a moral being and Justice is an integral part of morality; it follows that God acts justly in the world. As a universal principle, justice pertains to all entities, to the individual as well as to the nation. God's governance of the world in accordance with justice is called Providence.

As part of their Covenant with God, the Jewish people as a nation is promised material wealth and prosperity for obedience and is threatened with various punishments (including exile) for disobedience. This is emphasised in great detail in the Blessings and Curses passages in the Bible.

Promises of rewards for observing individual commandments are generally found in connection with positive precepts which call for the exercise of benevolence and charity. These rewards are described in terms of long life and material blessing. “Honour your father and your mother; that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God gives you”.

Already the books of the Prophets and the Wisdom Literature contain critical reflections upon the principle of Reward and Punishment. Jeremiah asks, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper?” and Habakkuk says, “How long O Lord shall I cry out and You not listen, shall I shout to You ‘Violence’ and You not save?...therefore the law fails and justice never emerges...For the wicked do beset the righteous, therefore judgement emerges perverted”. The problem is raised in Ecclesiastes and Psalms, and receives its most comprehensive and dramatic treatment in the Book of Job. This problem, called “the odicy” (justifying the acts of God), surfaces when experience is seen to conflict with what man expects on the basis of the principle of Divine Reward and Punishment. If the righteous suffer instead of receiving reward, the moral sense is outraged, as happens also if the wicked go unpunished and are free to oppress the innocent. The prosperity of the wicked offends. One biblical response is to say that the success of the wicked is only temporary. “When the wicked spring up as grass and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish, it is that they may be destroyed forever”.

To the question why Israel's punishment seems to be more severe than that meted out to other nations, Amos replies, “You alone have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities”, i.e., precisely because of God's special relation to Israel more is expected of it. At the same time, while other nations may have been utterly destroyed for their sins, the eternal existence of Israel is assured.

For those who interpret the “suffering servant” of Isaiah as referring to Israel, another meaning emerges for the suffering of Israel. It is not punishment for their sins but rather atonement for the sins of others. The justness of such vicarious suffering remains unexplained in the Bible.

Job, as well as other parts of the Bible, presents the concept of Nissayon (“test” or “trial”). Suffering need not be a punishment, but a means by which God “tests” the faith or character of the individual for his ultimate benefit.

 In the last chapters of Job (where God appears to Job out of the whirlwind), Job is humbled before the awesome power of God in nature. His own egocentric concerns are dwarfed in comparison to the magnitude of the universe. Man cannot comprehend the Divine plan.

Rabbinic Literature. In principle, the talmudic rabbis affirmed the biblical concept of Reward and Punishment, but in certain crucial areas developed the concept in new directions. While there are some allusions in the Bible to life after death, nowhere is an explicit connection made between that and the principle of Reward and Punishment. The rabbis concluded that the decisive arena for Reward and Punishment of the individual is in some more permanent existence after death. R. Jacob said, “This world is like an antechamber to the world to come; prepare yourself in the antechamber so that you may enter into the hall” [i.e., the bliss of the world to come is incomparable to anything experienced in this world].