What Does Psalm 104:21 Mean?
The young lions roar for prey; they seek their food from God.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God.THE KEY
The lion’s hunt still ends in dependence: even its fierce hunger seeks food from God.
THE MEANING
Your hunger does not place you outside God’s provision. Even the lion’s fierce pursuit is held inside dependence: its food is sought from God.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the thought that only the gentle or harmless are within God’s care; the predator, too, depends on God for its food.
THE ROOT
אָכְלָם
ʾokhlām
GROWS FROM
אכל
ʾ-k-l
Eat, consume.
The word rendered “meat” names what is eaten, from the same root that means “eat.” English can make the food sound like something the lion simply takes, but the verse places both its appetite and its food within dependence on God.
ALSO GROWS
ʾākal: To eat, consume.
אָכַל
The verb names the act that turns provision into nourishment; the lion’s “meat” belongs to this same eating-word.
maʾăkāl: Food, something eaten.
מַאֲכָל
This noun keeps the object of eating in the same root family, joining sustenance to consumption.
THE PATTERN
Every creature’s sustenance depends on God’s provision, whether it waits, cries, or hunts.
The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in its season.He gives to the beast its bread, and to the young ravens that call out.Look closely at the ravens. They neither sow nor reap, nor have an inner room or a storehouse, and God feeds them. How much more do you surpass the birds?THE THREAD
All of them look to you, to give them their food in its time.The same Hebrew form אָכְלָם (ʾokhlām, “their food”) appears in both verses: what the lions seek from God is what all creatures wait for God to give. The passage moves from fierce pursuit to provision without pretending the hunt is gentle.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us