Neville Goddard on Zechariah 7:4-7 - Mystical Bible Interpretation

Read Zechariah 7 in context

Scripture Focus

4Then came the word of the LORD of hosts unto me, saying,

5Speak unto all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month, even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me?

6And when ye did eat, and when ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves?

7Should ye not hear the words which the LORD hath cried by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities thereof round about her, when men inhabited the south and the plain?

Zechariah 7:4-7

Biblical Context

Zechariah questions whether the people’s fasts were offerings to God or mere personal discipline, and reminds that listening to the prophets requires inner alignment. True worship arises when the inner state matches the outward ritual.

Neville's Inner Vision

To Zechariah, the fasting in the fifth and seventh month was never wrong in itself, but it stands as a mirror of your inner life. The cry, 'did ye fast unto me, even unto me?' asks you to inspect the consciousness from which you fast. In Neville's terms, the land and city about Jerusalem are your inner conditions—prosperity is not a crowd’s feast but a thriving state of awareness. Your eating and drinking are not mere physical acts but signals of your inner appetite. If you have eaten for yourself, you have fed lack and fear; if you have heard the words spoken by earlier prophets, you awaken to a nous that has endured through season after season. The 'former prophets' call you to hear with the I AM, not with the ego’s memory. The seventy years symbolize long habitual identification with limitation; you can choose a new rhythm by assuming the reality of God’s presence here and now. When you align your inner hearing with the claim that God is within, your fasting becomes a symbolic discipline of willingness to live as the statement, not as the complaint.

Practice This Now

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and silently declare, 'I AM within me now.' Revise any past fasting as done unto the Lord, then feel the reality of His presence guiding each act in your life.