The Roman emperor challenged Rabban Gamliel with a direct theological question: if your God is everywhere, why can He not be seen? According to Sanhedrin 39b, the conversation exposed the limits of human perception rather than any limitation in God.
Rabban Gamliel asked the emperor to stare at the sun. The emperor protested: "I cannot—it is too bright." Rabban Gamliel replied: "The sun is merely one of God's servants. If you cannot look at the sun, how could you possibly look at the Divine Presence itself?"
A deeper theological puzzle surfaces in the same passage. Rabbi Elazar raised a contradiction between two verses. One says: "The Lord is good to all, and His compassion is over all His works" (Psalms 145:9). The other says: "The Lord is good to those who wait for Him" (Lamentations 3:25). Which is it—good to all, or good only to the faithful?
Rabbi Elazar resolved the tension with a parable. A man who owns an orchard waters all of it. The water reaches every tree indiscriminately. But when he hoes around the trees, he tends only the good ones. God's basic goodness—rain, air, life—falls on everyone. But His targeted protection goes only to those who deserve it.
The passage also addresses the most uncomfortable question in Jewish theology: does God rejoice when the wicked are destroyed? When the Egyptians drowned at the Red Sea, the ministering angels wanted to sing a victory hymn. God silenced them: "My handiwork is drowning in the sea, and you would sing before Me?" Rabbi Yonatan noted that the song of praise in (II Chronicles 20:21) conspicuously omits the phrase "for He is good." God permits justice. He does not enjoy it.