Two considerations led the rabbis to this conclusion. The first was the empirical evidence that the promise in the Bible of material reward for the performance of particular commandments by the individual was not being fulfilled in this world. The rabbis observed: “There is no reward in this world for the fulfilment of commandments”, and that the biblical promise, “that your days may be prolonged”, can refer to some eternal existence of the spirit after the death of the body. Reward for the precepts is not necessarily accorded in this world. The dominant Rabbinic view remained that both this world and the world to come were theatres for the Providential application of the principle of Reward and Punishment for every individual in various complicated permutations.
This concept of a “two-stage” human existence helped to alleviate the problem of “the righteous who suffer and the wicked who prosper.” The rabbis also cultivated the idea of “afflictions of love”, i.e., that suffering may not be a punishment but a test and an opportunity for spiritual growth. While the rabbis thought of various possible explanations for the suffering of the righteous, R. Yannai concluded: “It is not in our power to explain either the prosperity of the wicked and certainly not the afflictions of the righteous”.
Another factor which led the rabbis to develop the notion of the world to come as the ultimate theatre for individual Reward and Punishment was the realisation that material reward is not a proper motivation for the worship of God: “Be not like servants who minister to their master in order to receive a reward, but be like servants who minister to their master without the condition of receiving a reward, and let the reverence of Heaven be upon you”.
Another element developed by the rabbis is Resurrection of the dead which, according to one view in the Talmud, will be granted only to the righteous. Ultimate reward and punishment should be visited upon the unity of body and soul.
In their speculations about the nature of the ultimate reward and punishment, the rabbis spoke of Gan Eden (Garden of Eden) as the “place” of reward and Gehinnam as the “place” of punishment. The duration of the punishment for sins is given as 12 months. However, for the unrepentant wicked, some stipulate eternal punishment, described in physical terms as fire, while the happiness of ultimate reward is described as a wonderful banquet. Some of the rabbis clearly understood these teachings as purely symbolic.
In Medieval Jewish Thought. The medieval Jewish theologians who attempted to recast the biblical and Rabbinic thought into a coherent whole were compelled to treat the pivotal issue of Reward and Punishment. This was difficult in view of the non-philosophic character of the biblical material on the one hand, and the variety of conflicting opinions in the Rabbinic tradition on the other.
The crucial issue on which these thinkers were divided was whether justice and reason require that the body and soul as a unity or rather the soul alone be the recipient of the ultimate Reward and Punishment. Accepting the former as the case, Saadiah Gaon, for example, sketches a system in which after death, the souls of the righteous and the wicked are kept in separate “places” until the major eschatological event, the resurrection of the dead. This will take place after the Redemption and the coming of the Messiah that, for Saadiah, are merely preliminary to sorting out the truly righteous and wicked of the Jewish people. Once the body and soul are reunited, judgement will take place, after which a single Divinely-revealed substance will constitute “light” for the righteous and “fire” for the punishment of the wicked. Thus will commence the world to come, consisting of a radically transformed, highly spiritualised “new heaven and new earth” in which the righteous, after being purified of their few sins, will enjoy eternal happiness and the unrepentant wicked will suffer eternal punishment. A similar approach was taken by Nahmanides.
