It's interesting how the Jews develops this theme through the course of their history. In the Torah of Moses it is quite clear that dire punishments were meted out directly by God to those who sinned and that illness, disease and death were seen as God's punishment on sinful people. The Jewish kings who strayed usually suffered horrible deaths as a direct consequence of their sin. And then we come to the book of Job where the writer begins to tackle head-on the problem of the good man who suffers: and how, therefore, can disease be a punishment from God? And if it isn't what else can it be?
Through Judas Maccabaeus and in Daniel also the authors have no qualms in narrating how good Jews suffered terribly at the hands of their persecutors and, when we come to the gospels, Jesus says that rain falls on the just and the unjust alike ...which is a huge distance travelled from the vengeful God of the book of Moses. In the Torah, the leper is an unclean outcast because he has deserved his affliction but Jesus invites the leper back into the community through healing.
Centuries of prayer and study bearing fruit in a gradual revelation of God's real purposes. . . .