A psalm of Asaph opens this section of Aggadat Bereshit: "God has made Himself known in Judah; His name is great in Israel" (Psalm 76:2). And immediately the rabbis add the verse from Job: "The Lord is known for executing judgment; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their own hands" (Psalm 9:17). The way God becomes known in this world is through the mechanism of justice. Not through beauty. Not through abundance. Through judgment.
The rabbis were not celebrating punishment. They were making a structural observation about how the hidden becomes visible. In ordinary life, God's presence is not obvious. The wicked prosper; the righteous suffer; the accounting is always delayed. But when justice finally lands — when the wicked who seemed invincible collapse under the weight of their own choices — the hidden structure of the world becomes briefly legible. God is revealed in those moments not because He is a punisher by nature, but because His moral order is real, and reality eventually asserts itself.
The crucial qualifier: even in judgment, the divine attribute is mercy alongside justice. "The Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving-kindness and truth" (Exodus 34:6). The same formula God pronounced immediately after the sin of the golden calf — the worst moment in Israel's relationship with God — is the formula that defines divine character permanently. God is known in Judah through judgment, yes. But the judgment is never separable from the compassion that runs underneath it. The two cannot be untangled.