Neville Goddard on Lamentations 3:1-7 - Mystical Bible Interpretation

Read Lamentations 3 in context

Scripture Focus

1I AM the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

2He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.

3Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day.

4My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.

5He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail.

6He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.

7He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy.

Lamentations 3:1-7

Biblical Context

The speaker declares he has suffered affliction by the rod of wrath, led into darkness and kept within its dark confines. The imagery of walls, chains, and inert places expresses an inner state of mind, not external fate.

Neville's Inner Vision

Notice that the speaker names himself as the man who hath seen affliction by the rod of wrath, a consciousness misled by its own conclusions. Darkness is not punishment but a state of awareness the I AM presently imagines. In Neville's cadence, God is not outside but the quiet I AM within - awareness that can revise its storyline. The day-long turning of the hand against me is the mind's momentum when it believes a circumstance defines me. To liberate is to refuse the identification with the scene: I am not the oppression I feel; I am the consciousness that feels. When I imagine myself already free, and feel the feeling of freedom as real now, the walls dissolve, the girdle loosens, the chain becomes merely a picture in mind. The "dark places" become inner rooms lit by the awareness that I AM the creator of what I experience. By owning the I AM and rehearsing the opposite state, I rewrite the present into a new fulfillment.