hands on his head, and say, “This man who has separated himself shall be excluded from their consolations.”(178) We might now characterise this sort of suffering as the chastisement of love (of the righteous) to mankind, or rather to Israel. But we must not confuse it with the Chastisement of Love often mentioned in the Talmud, though this idea also seems calculated to account for the suffering of the righteous. Here the love is not on the side of the sufferer, but proceeds from him who inflicts this suffering. “Him,” says R. Huna, “in whom God delights he crushes with suffering.” As a proof of this theory the words of Is. liii. 10 are given, which are interpreted to mean: him whom the Lord delights in He puts to grief. Another passage, by the same authority, is to the effect that where there is no sufficient cause for punishment (the man being entirely free from sin), we have to regard his suffering as a chastisement of love, for it is said: “Whom the Lord loveth He correcteth” (Proverbs iii. 11).(179) To what purpose He corrects him may, perhaps, be seen from the following passage: “R. Eleazar ben Jacob says: If a man is visited by affliction he has to be thankful to God for it: for suffering draws man to, and reconciles him with God, as it is said: For whom God loveth he correcteth.”(180) It is in conformity with such a high conception that affliction, far from being dreaded, becomes almost a desirable end, and we hear many Rabbis exclaim, “Beloved is suffering,” for by it fatherly love is shown to man by God; by it man obtains purification and atonement, by it Israel came in possession of the best gifts, such as the Torah, the Holy Land, and eternal life.(181) And so also the sufferer, far from being considered as a man with a suspected past, becomes an object of veneration, on whom the glory of God rests, and he brings salvation to the world if he bears his affliction with joyful submission to the will of God.(182) Continuous prosperity is by no means to be longed after, for, as R. Ishmael taught, “He who has passed forty days without meeting adversity has already received his (share of the) world (to come) in this life.”(183) Nay, the standing rule is that the really righteous suffer, whilst the wicked are supposed to be in a prosperous state. Thus, R. Jannai said, “We (average people) enjoy neither the prosperity of the wicked nor the afflictions of the righteous,”(184) whilst his contemporary, Rab, declared that he who experiences no affliction and persecution does not belong to them (the Jews).(185)