What Does Psalm 34:10 Mean?
The young lions go lacking and go hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.
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 do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing.THE KEY
The verse’s promise is about lacking no good thing, not satisfying every appetite, and even lions show that strength cannot secure it.
THE MEANING
Even now, strength and appetite do not secure what is good; the young lions can still go hungry. As you seek the LORD, this verse names a different ground of sufficiency: you are not left lacking any good thing. Its promise concerns what is good, not every desire.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that strength and appetite can make you self-sufficient dissolves here: even young lions lack, while those seeking the LORD are not left lacking what is good.
THE ROOT
יֶחְסָרוּ
yeḥseru
GROWS FROM
חסר
ḥ-s-r
To be lacking, deficient, or missing.
“lack no” in this verse is yeḥseru. Here “want” means lack, not desire. The same root appears in Psalm 23:1, where the shepherd’s presence is joined to “I shall not want”: the two verses share a Hebrew word for being without lack.
ALSO GROWS
eḥsar: The first-person form of the same verb: “I shall lack.”
אֶחְסָר
Psalm 23:1 uses the same root in the shepherd line, echoing this verse’s promise of no lack.
maḥsor: A noun for need or deficiency.
מַחְסוֹר
This branch names the state of need itself, showing how the root speaks of what is missing.
דּוֹרְשֵׁי
doreshê
GROWS FROM
דרש
darash
To seek, inquire, or resort to.
The verse describes people actively seeking the LORD, not merely feeling a wish. A branch of the same root names inquiry and interpretation, giving “seek” the shade of turning toward and searching into.
ALSO GROWS
doresh: A participle for a person seeking or inquiring.
דֹּרֵשׁ
This form shows that the verse names seekers, the ones engaged in seeking.
midrash: A term formed from the same root for inquiry or interpretation.
מִדְרָשׁ
It preserves the root’s sense of searching into a matter, illuminating seeking as attentive inquiry.
THE PATTERN
Scripture locates sufficiency in relation to God, not in creaturely strength or appetite.
A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; I do not come up short.But seek first the governance of God and his alignment; and all these things will be added to you.And my God will fill every need of yours according to his riches of weight, by Jesus the Anointed One.THE THREAD
A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; I do not come up short.“I shall not want” uses the same root חָסֵר (ḥ-s-r), “to lack,” as “shall not want” here. Psalm 23 names the LORD as shepherd; Psalm 34 sets that same lack-language against hungry lions and those who seek the LORD.
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