Neville Goddard on Judges 17:3-5 - Mystical Bible Interpretation

Read Judges 17 in context

Scripture Focus

3And when he had restored the eleven hundred shekels of silver to his mother, his mother said, I had wholly dedicated the silver unto the LORD from my hand for my son, to make a graven image and a molten image: now therefore I will restore it unto thee.

4Yet he restored the money unto his mother; and his mother took two hundred shekels of silver, and gave them to the founder, who made thereof a graven image and a molten image: and they were in the house of Micah.

5And the man Micah had an house of gods, and made an ephod, and teraphim, and consecrated one of his sons, who became his priest.

Judges 17:3-5

Biblical Context

Judges 17:3-5 shows a family vow to dedicate silver to a god, which leads to making idols in a private shrine; a household ends up with a makeshift temple and a familial priesthood. This passage exposes how devotion can drift from true worship into external symbols.

Neville's Inner Vision

Like the woman who offered silver to the LORD and the house that sheltered idols, your mind has misread the seal of devotion as a thing outside you. The 'eleven hundred shekels' are energy given to a symbol, and the two hundred shekels set in the hands of a founder become the architecture of a private shrine. In truth, every image you worship externally is a mirror of an inner posture: a belief that God is elsewhere, that you must secure favor through ritual or possession. Yet you are not at the mercy of artifices; you are the I AM, the living awareness that animates all forms. When you identify with the inner temple rather than the image, the house dissolves and the priesthood shifts from a made man to the realization that your very consciousness is consecrated. The outer scene—money, idols, a son-priest—vanishes as a dream when the waking state of imagination reinterprets itself as communion with the One Presence. Your task is to revise the priority: worship the formless within, and all devotional forms become channels, not masters.

Practice This Now

Assume the feeling of the I AM now; declare, 'I am the temple; no idol speaks for God within me.' Then imagine the inner shrine shining with pure light, while the external shrine recedes.