On its head

What is common to the different sapiential figurations of the righteous sufferer in the Old Testament, whether Job, the supplicants of Pss 35, 69, and 73, or in Wis 2–3, is the notion that suffering is not a sign of divine absence but is instead—as in the case of Jeremiah’s suffering or of the suffering servant—understood as a sign of unusual closeness to God, whose nature as creator and teacher is confirmed (Wis 3:1–9).—The Development of God in the Old Testament, page 100