Job 17: The Consciousness of Despair and Hope

Compare with the original King James text

🔍 Explore Verse Ranges in Job 17

Quick Insights

Despair is a state of consciousness that contracts experience and produces images of extinction and abandonment.
Mockery and flattery are surfaces of divided attention, reflecting inner conflicts about worth and relationship.
Darkness, graves, and corruption are imaginative outcomes when hope is neglected and the self consents to defeat.
An upright, innocent current within persists and grows when attention returns to clarity and right action.

What is the Main Point of Job 17?

This chapter describes the inward drama of a mind that has surrendered to images of decay and loneliness; the central principle is that imagination shapes reality, so when attention dwells on death, mockery, and lost purpose those very circumstances are lived. Conversely, there is a persistent moral clarity — the righteous, the innocent, the one with clean hands — that represents a sustaining state of consciousness capable of reversing the collapse when embraced. The way out is not external rescue but a shift in the inner gaze: to change what is imagined and therefore what manifests.

What is the Spiritual Meaning of Job 17?

Reading these lines as movements of consciousness reveals a speaker who has allowed sorrow to thicken into identity. The breath becoming corrupt and days extinct are internal narratives taking authority, each thought a vote cast for decline. Grief here is not merely feeling but an operative belief: sleep in darkness, bed in the grave. That belief arranges circumstances to match itself, so the world responds with echoing images of failure and isolation. The presence of mockers and flattery are psychological textures that show how relationships mirror inner conditions. When one imagines being ridiculed, one will perceive or attract voices that confirm that story. Flattery that breeds blindness points to a split between surface persuasion and deeper integrity; the children’s eyes failing signals the transmission of false valuation across generations of attention. Yet the text also holds steady to an inner witness — the upright and the innocent — which represents clarity of attention and moral imagination. This current is not theatrical righteousness but the inner faculty that imagines wholesomeness and therefore strengthens over time. Hope is the pivot. In the chapter it seems absent, yet its memory persists like a faint pattern. Where hope is annihilated, the imagination fashions a tomb: the self makes companions of corruption and wormlike decay as metaphors it lives by. But because imagination is plastic, that tomb can be unmade. Recognizing the mental acts that declared darkness as domicile is the first corrective; once seen, attention can be redirected toward images of renewal, cleaner motives, and gradual strengthening. The process is lived: tiny acts of right attention dissolve the conviction of extinction, and the ‘clean hands’ of intention build a new trajectory from within.

Key Symbols Decoded

Graves, darkness, and the worm work as symbols of arrested imagination — the mind that has ceased to create life and instead recycles decay. These do not foretell fate so much as indicate present authorship: to speak of graves as home is to consent to cold, contracted scenes that will answer back. The mockers and the flattering friend are two faces of relational imagination: one that affirms worth by diminishing, and one that flatters to avoid truth; both are reflections of internally held judgments about value and vulnerability. The ‘upright’ and ‘clean hands’ symbolize a clarity of attention and consistency of inner action. They are less moral labels and more descriptions of consciousness that aligns thought, feeling, and imagining with constructive outcomes. When the inner life cultivates these states, the outer circumstances begin to echo their strength — innocence here meaning a refusal to collude with defeat rather than naïveté.

Practical Application

Begin by noticing the narratives you inhabit: when you find yourself rehearsing images of loss, mockery, or entombment, name the act of imagining rather than mistaking it for fact. Consciously withdraw consent from those scenes by refusing to continue their rehearsal; this is done by imagining a small, specific opposite — a breath that is clean, a day that lengthens, a child’s eyes that hold steady — and feeling the reality of that inner scene until it feels settled. Repeat this quietly in moments of stillness, allowing sensory detail and emotion to accompany the vision so it becomes a present cause. In relationships, test the images you carry about others by altering your inner narration; if you expect mockery, imagine an exchange where dignity is preserved and practice that feeling internally before speaking. Over time, these imaginative acts become new patterns of attention: the bed in darkness lifts, the grave no longer seems like home, and the sense of purpose reassembles. The work is patient and lined with small victories — choose right attention today, imagine a steadier self, and let that inner state gradually compose the outer circumstances that reflect it.

The Inner Theatre of Faith: Job 17 as a Psychological Drama

Job 17 reads like a late-night scene inside a single human mind, a psychological drama staged in the inner theater. The speaker is not an external man but a state of consciousness—worn, shrunken, besieged by doubt—reporting what is happening in the rooms and corridors of awareness. Every image in the chapter corresponds to an interior posture, a relationship between impulses, and the creative faculty that shapes experience.

The opening cry, "My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me," announces a consciousness that has identified with decline. "Breath" stands for the animating attention; when breath is corrupt, attention is clogged with pessimistic assumption. "Days are extinct" describes a sense of future having closed; time in which to act feels spent. The "graves" are the mind's acceptance of endings—habits, identities, projects—relegated to burial. This is the posture of resignation: imagination has been co-opted by fear and now projects only endings.

The mockers who remain with him are recognizable as inner voices of ridicule and consensus reality. They perpetuate the identity of defeat by repeating familiar verdicts: you have failed, you are exposed, you are finished. Their provocation is a particular quality of attention that refuses to be redirected; they mock because the mind keeps feeding them with agreement. "Doth not mine eye continue in their provocation?" means the seeing faculty habitually scans for proof of failure. This habitual scanning is itself constructive: whatever the eye finds, consciousness accepts and reproduces.

"Lay down now, put me in a surety with thee; who is he that will strike hands with me?" is a pivotal moment of longing for covenant. Psychologically, it expresses a desire to anchor identity in a reliable partner: to make an agreement with a generative state of mind that will guarantee transformation. "Striking hands" is the inner ritual by which imagination binds a new assumption. The question, "who will strike hands with me?" names the inner skepticism: who in me will commit to hope when the evidence seems otherwise? The answer will always be the creative faculty once invited and trusted.

"For thou hast hid their heart from understanding: therefore shalt thou not exalt them." Here the chapter points to the difference between seeing and understanding. Some aspects of mind are shut off from insight; they can parrot a doctrine or an identity but cannot receive the inward meaning that births change. They are hidden from understanding because they are not in contact with imagination's formative power. The consequence is that those parts cannot be elevated by mere argument; exaltation comes only when imagination assumes a new story and lives it.

"He that speaketh flattery to his friends, even the eyes of his children shall fail" addresses the psychology of soothing illusions. Flattery is the voice that tells the self what it wants to hear to avoid discomfort. Short-term comfort weakens future vision—the "eyes of his children" failing means the next generation of intention loses clarity when the present comforts are based on deception. In inner terms, secret concessions to fear produce a feebler lineage of purpose: what you indulge today becomes the impoverished expectation of tomorrow.

"He hath made me also a byword of the people; and aforetime I was as a tabret." The byword and tabret images describe a self that has been reduced to a public label and a noise-maker: identity has been objectified by collective commentary. Psychologically this is the experience of being known only as the sum of your mistakes. "Aforetime I was as a tabret" admits that once the self had rhythm and voice—an instrument whose beats were meaningful—but now that music is turned into ridicule. The danger is that one begins to perform the role assigned by others, and in performing it the inner creative power reinforces the script.

"Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow." Grief clouds perception and reduces the vitality of parts of self. "Members as a shadow" describes a psycho-physiological dimming: intention, appetite, memory, desire—each becomes attenuated. This is not physical decay alone but the psychic experience of withdrawal: the inward light that animates faculties has receded.

The chapter then distinguishes currents inside the psyche. "Upright men shall be astonied at this, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite." Here inner integrity reacts. The "upright men" and "innocent" are moments of conscience and true conviction that find the spectacle of self-betrayal astonishing. They challenge the hypocritical parts that play the defeated role for social effect or internal safety. This internal counterforce is important: in the theatre of consciousness there are always critics who, when roused, can expose false parts and call for honesty.

"The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger." These are the creative, persevering aspects of consciousness. "Righteous" symbolizes steady, imaginative fidelity to an assumed good; "clean hands" point to pure intention—acting without collusion with fear. Notice the dynamic: strength increases with persistence. Imagination is an accumulating power. Each continued act of constructive attention thickens the muscles of belief until a new reality becomes inevitable.

But Job's voice returns to despair: "But as for you all, do ye return, and come now: for I cannot find one wise man among you." This is the moment of disillusion with every available counsel. Psychologically it is the experience of being abandoned by advisors—friends, doctrines, internal templates—because all offered solutions are derivative of the same tired assumptions. The crisis can be a turning point: when external and internal authorities fail, the only recourse is toward the source—the creative imagination itself.

"My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart." This confesses a suspension of forward-moving will. "Purposes broken off" indicates interrupted projects and thwarted intent. Crucially, the "thoughts of my heart"—the emotive imaginings that shape reality—have been broken. This is the stage where resignation becomes identity: when the habitual imagining ceases, so does creation.

"They change the night into day: the light is short because of darkness." Night and day here are rhythms of receptivity and activity, dream and wakefulness. The sentence implies a reversal: the one who should receive guidance (night) has become active in darkness, confusing the rhythms. In psychological terms, it is the misalignment of imagination and conscious direction: the dreaming faculty is co-opted by fearful narratives so that the usual restorative cycles fail.

"If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness." Waiting without imaginative action becomes identification with death. To make a bed in darkness is to choose one’s dwelling place in resignation. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy: when one dwells in dark expectation, the inner speech and visualization that might alter the outcome are abandoned, and the mind shapes a graveyard.

"I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister." This shocking familial language maps the psychology of alignment with decay. By naming corruption as kin, the mind cements intimacy with decline. Imagination always forms relationships: when you treat decay as family, you invite its patterns into every situation. It is the ultimate enactment of defeated identity.

"And where is now my hope? as for my hope, who shall see it?" The essential question emerges: where is the counterimage? Hope is an internal image of resolution and renewal; when it is lost from sight, the creative faculty is starved. The chapter leaves the reader in this question intentionally, because the crisis is the threshold: when hope is not visible, the decision to imagine it inwardly becomes the necessary act of faith.

The closing vision—"They shall go down to the bars of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust"—is communal resignation, the massing of minds around the pit. It shows how social and internal consensus can drag individual imagination downward. Yet the line also makes explicit that "rest together in the dust" is a shared product; it is not enacted by fate but by collective imagining.

The psychological remedy implicit in this chapter is available: the same faculty that has produced the atmosphere of decay—attention and imagination—can be repurposed. "Who will strike hands with me?" answers itself when the mind chooses to covenant with a living image of restored being. The path out is not argument but assumption: choose an internal posture that sees breath as pure, days as open, and self as worthy. Refuse the mockers by withholding the attention they need; rouse the "upright men" within by naming a new intention and rehearsing it until the "clean hands" grow stronger. Turn the bedroom of resignation into a place of dreaming where you call the name of the self you intend to be and dwell in that assumption until it hardens into fact.

Job 17 is therefore a map: it locates the forces that produce inner demise and points to the single power that can reverse them. It is not a record of external fate but a dramatization of how identities are born, die, and can be reborn inside the imagination. The grave, after all, is only a house one moves into by quiet consent; to leave it requires entering a covenant with the creative imagination and refusing to give the mockers the breath they demand.

Common Questions About Job 17

How does Neville Goddard interpret Job 17 in terms of consciousness and the law of assumption?

Neville sees Job 17 as the spoken product of a state of consciousness; the wailing and hopeless words are the very assumption that perpetuates the outer scene. In his teaching the imagination is God within, and whatever state you assume and live in internally must express itself externally, so Job’s lament is not merely reportage but a created condition sustained by attention. Rather than a fixed destiny, this chapter shows how a man’s inner conversations harden into experience; change the inner scene, assume the feeling of the end fulfilled, and the circumstances must answer to that sovereign state (Job 17:1-16).

What practical visualization or affirmation does Neville recommend for the despondency expressed in Job 17?

When the heart feels like Job’s, the practice is to deliberately imagine and feel the completed contrary: see yourself dignified, upheld, and vindicated as if it were happening now, and repeat inward affirmations that embody that state until it feels real. At bedtime, construct a short, vivid scene—perhaps sitting in peace among friends who honor you, or rising from the darkness into light—and enter it with sensory detail and feeling; silently assume the sentence, I am sustained and my way is clear, until sleep dissolves the old feeling. Persist until the inner conversation changes the outward evidence (Job 17:8-9).

Which verses in Job 17 best illustrate Neville Goddard's teaching about the inner state creating outward circumstances?

Read Job’s admissions of inner corruption and despair alongside his descriptions of how friends mock and eyes continue in provocation, and you see the teaching: the internal word begets the external event; verses that most clearly show this are those that link the speaker’s inner condition to outer responses, for example the opening lament and the references to being made a byword and having dim eyes (Job 17:1-6, 8-9, 11-16). These passages illustrate how a lived assumption, spoken or unspoken, becomes the world one experiences.

How can Bible students reconcile Job 17's themes of despair with Neville's emphasis on imagining a desired state as real?

Reconciliation begins by understanding scripture as an inward map: Job’s sorrow is an honest description of a state, not an eternal verdict; the same chapter therefore teaches both the diagnosis and the cure. Bible students can acknowledge the reality of grief while also accepting the New Teaching that to change life one must change the state that precedes it—imagine and live from the end you desire, not from the lament, thereby honoring the truth of the text as an expression of inner law. In short, feel the sorrow, then assume the opposite state with faith until the evidence yields (Job 17:1-16).

Are there Neville Goddard lectures, transcripts, or guided meditations specifically applying Job 17 to manifestation practice?

There are recordings and transcripts where his students and sometimes he himself address the book of Job and its psychological meaning, though explicit, line-by-line commentaries on Job 17 are uncommon; instead you will find many lectures on the general theme that the Bible is an allegory of states and that lament turns to triumph when imagination is rightly employed. Practically, seekers adapt his general techniques—living in the end, revision, night-time imaginal scenes, and concise affirmations—to Job 17’s themes of despair, using guided meditations or personal practice to replace the lamenting state with one of assurance and inner vindication.