Sam: I take that gemara to mean that there is no guarantee of schar mitzva in this world.
Because what is the other choice–that ??? ???? ???? ???? ???? means that nothing in this world happens because we do mitzvos or aveiros? Does that comport with the rest of chazal and the Torah?
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And the myriad times in chazal that it says that someone was punished for something or rewarded for something. For example Dovid Hamelech in the daf a couple days ago (for those on the REAL daf schedule).
I don’t think anybody understands that there is the entire corpus of shas on one side, and it is a machlokes with that gemara!