असौ मया हतः शत्रुर्हनिष्ये चापरानपि।ईश्वरोऽहमहं भोगी सिद्धोऽहं बलवान्सुखी॥
asau mayā hataḥ śatrur haniṣye cāparān apiīśvaro ’ham ahaṃ bhogī siddho ’haṃ balavān sukhī
Word by word
The verse says
That rival of mine is finished, and I will finish the others too. I am the one in charge. I am the one who enjoys. I have arrived, I am strong, I am happy.
In plain words
The voice goes up a level, and the word it reaches for is startling.
Īśvaro 'ham - I am the lord. The same word used for God a chapter ago is now being used by a man about himself.
And look at the last three: successful, strong, happy. He is announcing the happiness. Nobody who has it does that.
Where you've felt this · in failure
Your father's cousin spends twenty minutes at a family gathering explaining how well the business is going, who he has dealt with, what he turned down. Everybody nods. Later his wife mentions, without making anything of it, that they have let the driver go. Nothing he said was false. All of it was being said to somebody, and the somebody was not in the room.
Going deeper
A man calling himself lord is the centre of this chapter, and we have already been given the word to measure it against.
Saying I am the lord is not treated as blasphemy. It is treated as a mistake about the facts. Chapter 15 said the self is a fragment - carried, held up, fed. This voice has taken the holding and claimed to be the holder.
The tell is in the final three words, and anybody who has been around people can read it. Successful, powerful, happy. States that get announced are generally states that are not being had. A person actually at ease does not list it.
So this is not a portrait of a strong man. It is a portrait of somebody doing an enormous amount of work to be believed, including by himself, and the exhaustion of that is the punishment this chapter has in mind long before any hell is mentioned.