Job 34: Conscious States of Strength and Justice

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Quick Insights

A conscience that accuses and a higher consciousness that judges are two states alternating within the psyche, and the drama of suffering reveals which state governs imagination.
Righteous indignation and self-justification are creative acts of mind that shape perception and, therefore, experience.
Divine impartiality in this reading points to the unbiased inner law: imagination returns what it believes, neither favoring status nor denying consequence.
Repentance and quiet attention shift the center of will from outer complaint to inner correction, altering the narrative the self sustains.

What is the Main Point of Job 34?

This chapter, read as inner drama, teaches that the life we experience is fashioned by the prevailing state of consciousness: when the self insists on its own righteousness or wallows in accusation, it sets in motion corresponding realities; when it aligns with an impartial, discerning awareness that refuses favoritism or self-deception, it halts unjust outcomes and redirects the imagination toward restoration.

What is the Spiritual Meaning of Job 34?

The speech within represents a movement from complaint to accountability. At first the inner voice protests — I am wronged, I am cut off — and that protest becomes a habit of imagination that continually reconstructs scenes of lack and injustice. That habitual state is the wound that feels incurable because imagination, repeatedly entertained, has built a world matching its tone. Recognizing this is the first conversion: seeing that words and judgments are not mere commentary but formative acts. There is also a revelation of an impartial watcher, a consciousness that neither flatters the proud nor privileges the mighty. This is not an external juridical deity but the discovery of an inner law that reflects the quality of attention back to its source. When attention regards all things without favoritism, the stories of power, deceit, or hidden sin lose their hold; they are exposed as fabrications of the angry self. The quiet, unpartisan mind responds not with vindication but with correction, pressing the imaginative faculty to rehearse what it wants to live. Suffering in the chapter is the mirror that shows which state rules: if pride and complaint are entertained, suffering deepens because imagination sustains its form. If humility and willingness arise — the teaching voice asking to be shown what it does not see — then chastening becomes an invitation to revise inner conviction. In practice, this looks like shifting from rhetorical rebellion to receptive enquiry: replacing the mantra of righteous grievance with the quiet sentence, teach me what I do not yet understand. That movement alters the habitual imagery and therefore the pattern of returns the mind receives.

Key Symbols Decoded

The figure who accuses and the figure who judges are symbolic modes of attention. The accuser embodies the self that clings to its narrative and defends identity through complaint; its language is absolutist, its imagination fixed on injury. The judge symbolizes the impersonal, discerning faculty that measures the fruit of imagination and corrects by exposing cause and effect. Night and darkness in the scene represent the unconscious images that work without oversight; when the watcher looks upon the ways of mind, those nocturnal constructs lose their shelter and cannot continue to operate unseen. Other images—mighty men taken away, the hypocrite removed—speak to the fall of imagined inner authorities. 'Mighty men' are the self-created powers of conceit, reputation, or resentment that once governed behavior; to see them 'taken away' is to witness the loosening of their hold when attention refuses to feed them. The 'cry of the poor' is the voice of the neglected feeling or forgotten desire calling for recognition; when the impartial observer hears it, restoration begins because imagination is invited to reimagine the poor part as full and attended to.

Practical Application

Begin by observing the language you use inwardly. When a protesting thought arises — I am wronged, I am punished, this is unfair — note it without adding fuel. Name it as a creative act of imagination rather than objective fact. Then, deliberately imagine an alternative scene that embodies the impartial witness: a clear, calm perspective that hears the complaint but refuses to dramatize it, reconstructing instead an image of repair, learning, or dignified restitution. Rehearse that new scene with sensory detail until it gains emotional conviction. When chastening or discomfort follows, treat it as corrective guidance rather than accusation. Ask the inner question, show me what I cannot see, and hold the answer in feeling more than in argument. In waking moments, imagine the consequence you desire — not as wishful thinking but as the next lived scene — and play it inwardly with certainty. The law at work here is simple: the state of consciousness you dwell in generates its likeness. Shift who you are being, and the world will conform to that inner architecture.

Elihu’s Reckoning: The Inner Logic of Suffering and Divine Justice

Job 34 reads like a fierce, concentrated courtroom scene taking place entirely within the theater of mind. The speaker, Elihu, is not another historic person but a soprano of corrective consciousness that rises up to challenge Job and the chorus called the wise men. He speaks as the faculty that insists on law, balance, and accountable imagination. Reading the language psychologically turns the chapter into a map of how inner states accuse, defend, judge, and ultimately transform one another.

The opening summons, hear my words, O ye wise men, and give ear unto me, shows the first movement: the voice of higher attention calling the intellect to listen. The wise men are reason, memory, and habit who taste experience as the mouth tastes food; they evaluate and compare. But tasting alone does not create. Elihu urges them to choose judgment and know what is good, which is to bring consciousness to a decision about which imaginal acts will be entertained. This is the pivot: judgment here is not a legal imposition from without but the inner decision to assume a new state and thereby alter perception.

When Elihu quotes Job saying I am righteous and laments Job’s belief that God has taken away his judgment, the psychological drama becomes personal: Job is the suffering ego that insists on self-justification. He feels injured, convinced that some powerful external law or fate has usurped his ability to get what his identity claims. In consciousness that feeling often appears as victimhood, the story that the world treats me unjustly. Elihu’s retort reframes that suffering as an outcome of one’s own dispositional imaging. The accusatory voice says, in effect, you have been drinking scorn, you have mixed with workers of iniquity, and your delight in God has failed you. Read psychologically, those workers of iniquity are recurrent negative images, resentments, and identifications that accompany Job; they are the mental companies one keeps. They are not moral monsters out there but patterns of imagining within.

Elihu then insists that far be it from God that he should do wickedness; the Almighty will render to each according to his ways. This is a direct psychological law: the inner creative presence, call it the divine imaginal self, mirrors back what the mind habitually assumes. God or the Almighty in this chapter is the operative consciousness that enacts assumed states. To set his heart upon man, to gather spirit and breath, means the Self takes the present configuration of attention and breathes life into it. If attention is trained on lack, lack is given form. If it is turned to the imagined good, the nervous system and outward conduct begin to arrange themselves accordingly. The text’s insistence that all flesh shall perish together and man shall return unto dust is a reminder that the forms of identity are transient; it is the imaginal root that survives and redistributes itself.

Who hath given him a charge over the earth? asks Elihu rhetorically. Psychologically, the question points inward: who among the personalities in consciousness claims jurisdiction over the whole inner terrain? The answer is that the Self, the law of assumption, exercises jurisdiction not by arbitrary will but by the impartial functioning of imagination. There is no darkness nor shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves. In other words, negative imaginal structures cannot remain concealed from attention indefinitely. What is imagined with emotional conviction impresses, and the Self brings it to manifestation with a kind of moral neutrality. It is not punitive; it is mechanical and formative.

Elihu continues that God will not lay upon man more than right; that he should enter into judgment with God. This passage softens the psychological horror: the inner law is corrective, not vindictive. The soul will be confronted by what it has imagined, but the encounter aims to reveal truth rather than punish. The phrase warns that the mind’s suffering is proportionate to the false claims it has entertained. In practical terms this means that the remedy lies in recognition and re-assumption: to cease arguing with the reality one’s imagination has produced and instead take responsibility by changing the inner scene.

The night images, the breaking in pieces of the mighty men without number, the overturning in the night so that they are destroyed, describe how hidden convictions collapse when the light of new attention is applied. Midnight and darkness are psychological terms for the unconsciousness of habit; when the Self withdraws ordinary sustaining attention, the structures built on those habits fall away without the need for heroic violence. Change often happens in the night of consciousness, in the background processes of rehearsal and incubation, where previous convictions are dissolved and reassembled.

Because they turned back from him, and would not consider any of his ways, so that they cause the cry of the poor to come unto him, speaks to the dynamic of estrangement and appeal. The cry of the poor and the afflicted are the inner urgencies—pain, desire, longing—that call the divine imaginal faculty back into activity. When attention is quieted and aligned with the Self, peace is given, and no external trouble can hold sway. Conversely, when attention turns away from the imaginal law, disturbance returns. The portrait here is of an inner therapist: when he giveth quietness, who then can make trouble? implies that the primary cure for suffering is the restoration of quiet, imaginal containment.

The warning against the hypocrite reigning is a psychological admonition that false identity must not govern. When persona and posturing, which pretend to righteousness while living in contradiction, are permitted to rule, they ensnare the populace of the mind. A right relationship with the inner law requires genuine alignment between imagining and being. To confess I have borne chastisement, I will not offend any more, and to ask teach me what I see not, is the movement of surrender that opens the mind to corrective imaginings. The ideal response to inner correction is humility and teachability, which allow the imaginal faculty to reimprint reality.

Elihu’s desire that Job may be tried unto the end because of his answers for wicked men is paradoxically merciful: trial is the process by which falsehoods are exposed and dissolved. Psychologically, the unrelenting trial is the rehearsal in imagination until the new state becomes the settled state. The chapter insists that stubborn argumentation with the Self produces more resistance; better to be tried, to have the assumptions examined, and to allow the imaginal corrections to operate.

Finally, the repeated appeal to let men of understanding tell me and let a wise man hearken presents a practical counsel. Understanding is the faculty that disciplines imagination by choosing what it rehearses. Wisdom listens, observes consequences, and then deliberately re-bodies new assumptions. The admonition that Job hath spoken without knowledge and that his words were without wisdom is not scolding so much as clarifying: words and protests that do not rest on conscious imagining will not alter experience.

The creative power operating here is imagination itself, the divine artisan within the human mind. It renders according to the habits of feeling and thought. This chapter, then, is an instruction: recognize that suffering is often the echo of habitual imaginal acts; accept the inner judge who calls attention to the law; stop hiding behind rationalizations; allow quietness to reclaim the scene; and, finally, change the imaginal script with disciplined assumption. The transformation is accomplished not by arguing with outer events but by assuming, with conviction and feeling, the state that corresponds to the desired reality. When the imaginal life changes, the world follows, impartially and inevitably.

Read this way, Job 34 is not primarily about cosmic retribution but about inner jurisdiction. It frames a psychology of accountability: the Self mirrors back to us the content of our imagining, and justice is the faithful administration of that mirroring. The work of spiritual refinement is to learn how to imagine with clarity and steadiness, to stop imputing sovereignty to false voices, and to let the quiet judgment of the imaginal Self reorder experience. That is the practical meaning hidden in the Hebrew courtroom: take the bench within, and let a wiser imagination govern.

Common Questions About Job 34

How can I apply the Law of Assumption to the themes in Job 34?

Apply the Law of Assumption to Job 34 by first recognizing Elihu’s declaration that God watches the ways of man as a statement about inner attention (Job 34); assume the state you would like God’s attention to record. Practically, decide the end, live mentally from that assumption throughout the day, and feel its truth in the present moment, especially before sleep when imaginal impressions harden. Reject outer evidence that contradicts your assumed state by returning to the feeling rather than arguing with facts. Confess no doubt, correct speech that betrays old beliefs, and persist until the new state becomes natural; then the outer will rearrange to reflect that inner law.

Are there Neville Goddard lectures or summaries specifically on Job 34?

Neville gave many lectures and writings that unpack portions of Job and the prophetic voice, and you will find transcriptions and recordings where he addresses Elihu’s themes—God seeing the ways of man and the inward law of judgment—though there may not be a single formal lecture titled exactly Job 34. Search collected lectures, indexes, and transcript archives for keywords like Job, Elihu, or God’s judgment, or consult study notes from his students; such resources commonly summarize his reading that imagination and assumed states are the operative power behind the text. Expect brief expositions rather than long verse-by-verse commentaries and cross-reference those with the chapter (Job 34).

How does Neville Goddard interpret Job 34 in light of imagination and consciousness?

Neville taught that Elihu’s insistence that God sees the ways of man (Job 34) points to the one fact: consciousness is the unseen legislator of experience, and imagination is the law by which God operates within you. In this reading the speech about judgment and the remaking of men becomes instruction: if you assume a state, you set the inner law in motion and the outer world must answer. The text’s emphasis on God’s impartial registry of deeds shows that nothing in the world can contradict the state you occupy; change the state, and the circumstances align. Practically, dwell in the feeling of the desired end until it feels actual.

What manifestation lessons can Bible students draw from Job 34 according to Neville?

Students reading Job 34 learn manifestation lessons about the primacy of inner decree: Elihu’s claim that God ‘seeth all his goings’ and will render according to a man’s ways (Job 34) is an admonition to govern thought and feeling with deliberate imagination. Neville taught that to manifest rightly one must accept responsibility for the assumed state, cultivate the feeling of the wish fulfilled, and persist despite outer contradiction. The chapter warns against hypocrisy and careless words, urging sincerity in the inner life; hence speak less about lack and inhabit the satisfied state. When your imaginal acts are consistent and self-evident, the world reorganizes to mirror that inner conviction.

Does Job 34 support the idea that our inner state creates our external circumstances?

Yes; Job 34 supports the proposition that inner state determines outward circumstances by emphasizing God’s observant presence and impartial rendering of a person according to his ways, which can be read as conscious states forming consequences (Job 34). Elihu’s warning that hypocrisy and ungodly speech bring destruction shows the moral correlate of assuming contrary states: what you harbor within will ripen outwardly. Metaphysically, God represents the one consciousness that reflects back whatever state you occupy; when you change assumption and imagination you change the seed within, and the world must obey that inner law. Therefore make the state right first, and events follow.