a young lion in its prime: past the helpless cub stage, strong enough to hunt and roar on its own.
Hebrew has a whole family of words for the lion, and this one picks out the young lion at the height of its strength. It has left the cub stage (גּוּר) behind and now hunts and roars for itself. The stress falls on vigor and menace, the predator at its most dangerous, not on age in any tender sense.
The Bible almost always uses the word as a picture rather than to describe an actual animal. It stands for dangerous enemies lying in wait, for the roar of a proud king, for hostile foreign empires, and, strikingly, for God himself when he comes in judgment. A few places do describe real lions: the one that attacks Samson, or the lions that seek their food from God. But the image writers reach for again and again is the fierce young predator.
Because Hebrew is so rich in lion words, poets often set several in a single verse, each naming the beast from a different angle. This word sits between the ordinary term for a lion (אֲרִי) and the poetic ones (לָבִיא, שַׁחַל, לַיִשׁ). Scholars caution against pressing these into a rigid scale of ages, since much of the time the poets are simply varying their vocabulary. Even so, reading this word as plain "lion" flattens the picture the writer had in mind: not a cub, not a spent old beast, but a lion at the peak of its power.
Whether the Hebrew original of Psalm 34:10 (Hebrew 34:11) read "young lions" (Masoretic Text) or "rich" (reflected in the ancient versions).
- majorityThe Masoretic reading כְּפִירִים "young lions" is original: even the strongest young lions lack and hunger, while those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.; J. J. M. Roberts, "The Young Lions of Psalm 34,11," Biblica 54 (1973): 265-267
- minorityThe verse originally read "rich," as rendered by the Septuagint (πλούσιοι), the Peshitta, and the Vulgate, with the Masoretic "young lions" a later reading.; Septuagint (Psalm 33:11)
Disputed
Whether the several Hebrew lion words mark fixed developmental stages of the animal (with kephir as the specific young-but-hunting stage) or are overlapping poetic synonyms chosen mainly for variation.
- majorityThe lion terms are overlapping poetic synonyms selected for parallelism and variety, not a rigid age-taxonomy, though a latent "young but capable hunter" nuance remains in kephir.; Brent A. Strawn, What Is Stronger than a Lion? Leonine Image and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, OBO 212 (2005); G. Johannes Botterweck, "אֲרִי ʾărî," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) 1:374-388
- minorityKephir names a genuine life stage, a lion old enough to hunt its prey and so distinct both from the cub and from the fully grown lion.; BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. כְּפִיר