Neville Goddard on Ezra 10:7-17 - Mystical Bible Interpretation

Read Ezra 10 in context

Scripture Focus

7And they made proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem unto all the children of the captivity, that they should gather themselves together unto Jerusalem;

8And that whosoever would not come within three days, according to the counsel of the princes and the elders, all his substance should be forfeited, and himself separated from the congregation of those that had been carried away.

9Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered themselves together unto Jerusalem within three days. It was the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month; and all the people sat in the street of the house of God, trembling because of this matter, and for the great rain.

10And Ezra the priest stood up, and said unto them, Ye have transgressed, and have taken strange wives, to increase the trespass of Israel.

11Now therefore make confession unto the LORD God of your fathers, and do his pleasure: and separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from the strange wives.

12Then all the congregation answered and said with a loud voice, As thou hast said, so must we do.

13But the people are many, and it is a time of much rain, and we are not able to stand without, neither is this a work of one day or two: for we are many that have transgressed in this thing.

14Let now our rulers of all the congregation stand, and let all them which have taken strange wives in our cities come at appointed times, and with them the elders of every city, and the judges thereof, until the fierce wrath of our God for this matter be turned from us.

15Only Jonathan the son of Asahel and Jahaziah the son of Tikvah were employed about this matter: and Meshullam and Shabbethai the Levite helped them.

16And the children of the captivity did so. And Ezra the priest, with certain chief of the fathers, after the house of their fathers, and all of them by their names, were separated, and sat down in the first day of the tenth month to examine the matter.

17And they made an end with all the men that had taken strange wives by the first day of the first month.

Ezra 10:7-17

Biblical Context

Ezra 10:7-17 describes a call for the exiles to gather in Jerusalem, confess their transgressions of taking strange wives, and enact a reform that separates them from what unsettles their loyalty to God. The passage shows a communal decision to restore covenant loyalty through deliberate inner alignment and boundary-setting.

Neville's Inner Vision

Within the inner theater, the proclamation is your decision to return to the wholeness of the I AM. The 'house of God' becomes your kneeling mind, where the stirring rain of fear and resistance shows you what is not yet aligned. When you hear 'three days' and 'gather yourselves,' understand that you are being asked to pause the old self-contractions long enough to observe your inner state. The 'strange wives' are the beliefs, identifications, and habits that have crept into your consciousness, diminishing your loyalty to the Father within. Ezra's appeal to confession is the invitation to acknowledge these misalignments without blame, then to do his pleasure—namely, to align your thoughts and loyalties with your true divine nature. The act of separating from the land and from the strange wives is the inner choice to withdraw attention from counterfeit voices and to commit to a lifestyle of purity of awareness. When the assembly answers, 'As thou hast said, so must we do,' your mind agrees to a new assumption, and the heavy rain of resistance softens as the wrath of fear is turned away by understanding and faith.

Practice This Now

Assume the feeling of the I AM gathering in the inner temple; for three days, revise a belief that feels like a strange wife, and declare it no longer central to your life. Then choose to align your thoughts with your divine nature, and feel it real by repeating, 'I am the I AM,' and 'the house of God is within me' until the sense of separation dissolves into unity.