Bad things, good people: a debate to avoid?

Most of the content of Pirkei Avot consists of advice as to how a conscientious Jew should behave. Some of that advice is couched in positive terms, when the rabbis of the mishnah explicitly tell us what to do (e.g. acquire for yourself a friend, pursue peace, judge others favourably, don’t stare at people in their moment of disgrace). Other advice is implicit. For example, by describing four permutations of people who are either swift or slow to anger and either swift or slow to calm down again, the mishnah makes it plain which sort of person we should seek to be.

A small number of mishnayot do neither of these things. One such mishnah is the teaching of Rabbi Yannai (Avot 4:19):

 אֵין בְּיָדֵֽינוּ לֹא מִשַּׁלְוַת הָרְשָׁעִים, וְאַף לֹא מִיִּסּוֹרֵי הַצַּדִּיקִים

This is taken to mean that it lies outside our power to understand either the tranquillity of the wicked or the suffering of the righteous. If this mishnah is not telling us what to do, or at least alluding to the path we should do best to take, what is it doing in this tractate, surrounded as it is by quantities of powerful moral instruction?

When we read this teaching, our minds are immediately drawn to the age-old debate over why good things happen to bad people and vice versa. This debate features in the Babylonian Talmud (Berachot 7a) and it was certainly known in Mishnaic times. Commentators on Avot have a tendency to be drawn into this discussion too. The bottom line is that God, being omniscient and all-just, possesses both the information and the understanding that are necessary for the implementation of His plan, a plan which cannot be known to us and which involves a settling of accounts in a future world to which we are not privy.

It seems to be that Rabbi Yannai, far from engaging in this debate, is actually calling on us not to become involved in it either. A later mishnah (Avot 5:20) points out that disputes that are “for the sake of Heaven”, such as those between Hillel and Shammai, will have a constructive outcome, while those not for that end will not. Can Rabbi Yannai be suggesting to us that, if a debate is doomed to have no constructive outcome, as is the case here where we are either judging God or second-guessing his decisions, it must by definition be one that is not for the sake of Heaven?