Avot256

6:
If God is righteous and just, if God is aware of man's deeds and requites them according to the standards of His Torah, how are we to explain the obvious fact of life that many righteous people suffer and many wicked people succeed? When we studied the third mishnah of the first chapter of this tractate we noted how this problem of divine justice became acute. [See Avot 021 and the following shiurim.] A new conceptualization of Divine retribution was needed, because the old one did not seem to fit the facts of life.

7:
According to modern scholarship it was at that time that the book of Daniel was composed, and it was composed in order to give effect to the new teaching. Daniel and his colleagues are depicted as resisting attempts to make them conform to the gentile way of life, being prepared to suffer for their faith and finding all sorts of ways to maintain its precepts under the most difficult circumstances. But for the readers all this was but 'moral uplift'. The real message of the book is to be found at the end of the book [Daniel 12:1-4]:

8:
In other words, the concept of Teĥiyyat ha-Metim was introduced in order to reconcile the concept of divine justice with the observed facts of life. According to this teaching there will come a time "at the culmination of history" when God will resurrect all the dead of all the ages and dispense absolute justice: those who had failed to live according to His law would be condemned "to shame and everlasting abhorrence" while those who had led good and decent lives would be rewarded with "everlasting life" and "will shine like the brightness of the heavenly expanse", basking for evermore in the glory of divine approval and pleasure.

9:
Thus Judaism recognised that in this life we do not always see perfect justice. The righteous do suffer and the wicked do prosper. Mortal man is so limited in his ability to see beyond his own experience that he must just accept that ultimately God's justice will prevail. At the very end of the book of Job, after Job has pleaded through more than thirty chapters that God explain Himself, God finally appears "in a storm" [Job 38:1-18] and answers Job just as He answers Jeremiah. But this time it is not just one rhetorical question, but a whole series of rhetorical questions that Job is offered so that he will understand why he cannot understand:

After that Job is left speechless. Indeed, "we have no explanation neither for the serenity of the wicked nor for the tribulations of the righteous."

10:
After all this you may be interested to read my own attempt to deal with the question of theodicy (divine justice) which has become truly vexed once again because of the events which took place in the middle of the last century. You will find my modest essay here.

In Mishnah 18 of this chapter [Avot 254 we found that Rabbi Nehorai advises us to "exile yourself to a place of Torah".

Ed Frankel writes:

It is interesting that Rabbi Nehorai uses the verb to exile oneself. Exile is such a negative connotation in most instances. In our era it has become so pejorative that rather than referring to the Jewish masses around the world as living in Exile, we refer to their homes as the Diaspora. Exile usually connotes forced abandonment of that which is near and dear. It is to give up one's home and values for something else, usually forced.

In this vein, the concept of exiling oneself is truly an amazing choice of words. To me it is reminiscent of Avraham Avinu encouraged to leave Ur Hakasdim to go where the KB"H directed. In doing this, Avraham was promised vast, unspecified rewards.

I see Rabbi Nehorai's lesson as an Avraham of sorts. He seems to be referring to a time when there was nothing wrong with where a student lived, but he could not possibly have attained real learning there. At ths time, he says not that a student must travel to a place where there is a scholar, but he must exile himself to that place. His choice of words is amazing, as he did have options. This use of the verb exile indicates how powerful the obligation to study must have been considered by our Sages. After all one can always travel abroad to study. I did that myself, leaving my home in Philadelphia to explore undergraduate degrees in New York, and leaving New York for a junior year abroad at Hebrew University. This, though, is more, as when I completed my tours of study, I returned home. Rabbi Nehorai seems to refer to a permanent change. If the ultimate mitzvah is Talmud Torah, even when one is comfortable and at home, and even dedicated to Torah study, it is not enough. One has to give up all that matters at home for that which truly counts.

To me, that is a profound thought.