Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, one of the great first-century sages, lay ill in his bed. Four of his colleagues came to visit him — among them Rabbi Tarfon, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, and Rabbi Akiva. Each tried in his own way to offer comfort, and each felt the comfort fall flat.
Rabbi Tarfon spoke of how Eliezer was "more precious to Israel than a drop of rain." Rabbi Yehoshua said he was "more precious than the sun." Rabbi Elazar called him "more precious than a father and mother." All lovely. None of it reached the bedside.
Then Rabbi Akiva — the youngest, the shepherd who had learned his first letters at forty — spoke up.
"Suffering is precious."
That was all. He did not praise his teacher. He did not deny the pain. He named the suffering itself as a gift — because suffering, Akiva taught, begets teshuvah, repentance. Illness is the one teacher stubborn students cannot talk over. It strips the excuses away. It forces a person to revise the account of his life.
The ailing rabbi, according to Gaster's exemplum No. 127, was comforted — not because Akiva had minimized the suffering, but because he had dignified it. Akiva did not promise healing. He promised that the pain was not wasted. For a man on a sickbed, that is sometimes the only comfort that lands.