Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 34:10
The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good [thing].
10. The young lions ] Best understood literally, not as a metaphor for the rich (LXX , though possibly from a different reading), or powerful oppressors (Psa 35:17). The sense is that the strongest beasts of prey, most capable of providing for themselves, may suffer want (Job 4:11); not so God’s people. Cp. Psa 23:1.
For the touching connexion of these words with St Columba’s last hours see Ker’s Psalms in History and Biography, p. 62. He was transcribing the Psalter, and at this verse he laid down his pen. “Here at the end of the page I must stop; what follows let Baithen write.” “The last verse he had written,” says his biographer Adamnan, “was very applicable to the saint who was about to depart, and to whom eternal good shall never be wanting; while the one that followeth is equally applicable to the father who succeeded him, the instructor of his spiritual children.”
11ff. If such are the blessings promised to those who fear the Lord, how essential to know what the fear of the Lord is! Accordingly the poet adopts the language of a teacher and addresses his sons. So the teacher in Proverbs 1-8 constantly addresses his disciples as sons (Psa 4:1), or my son.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The young lions do lack and suffer hunger – That is, they often do it, as compared with the friends of God. The allusion is especially to the young lions who are not able to go forth themselves in search of food. Perhaps the idea is, that they are dependent on the older lions – their parents – for the supply of their needs, as the pious are dependent on God; but that the result shows their reliance to be often vain, while that of the pious never is. The old lions may be unable to procure food for their young; God is never unable to provide for the wants of his children. If their needs are in any case unsupplied, it is for some other reason than because God is unable to meet their necessities. The word lack here – rush – means to be poor; to suffer want; to be needy: Pro 14:20; Pro 18:23.
But they that seek the Lord – That seek Him as their Friend; that seek His favor; that seek what they need from Him. To seek God is a phrase which is often used to denote true piety. It means that we wish to know Him; that we desire His friendship; and that we seek all our blessings from Him.
Shall not want any good thing – Any real good. God is able to supply every need; and if anything is withheld, it is always certain that it is not because God could not confer it, but because He sees some good reasons why it should not be conferred. The real good; what we need most; what will most benefit us – will be bestowed on us; and universally it may be said of all the children of God that everything in this world and the next will be granted that is really for their good. They themselves are often not the best judges of what will be for their good; but God is an infallible Judge in this matter, and He will certainly bestow what is best for them.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 34:10
The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger; but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.
Lions lacking, but the children satisfied
I. A short but beautiful description of a true Christian. He is one that seeks the Lord. This description of a Christian is invariably correct. It the promise set forth by way of contrast. They shall not want any good thing. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; that is the foil to set off the jewel and make it shine more brightly. They shall not want any good thing. We have heard of the celebrated cheque for a million pounds which has been preserved; here is one for millions of millions. Here is a promise wide as our wants, large as our necessities, deep as our distresses. But here is a contrast. The young lions do lack, etc. There are certain men in the world who, like the lions, are kings over others. They are great and mighty men; they have no need of a Saviour, or of the Holy Spirit! You may think, perhaps, like David, that they are not plagued like other men. But you dont know that. They are very often plagued when they do not tell you. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing. Poor and helpless though they are, having no works of righteousness of their own, confessing their sin and depravity, they shall want no good thing. Is it not amazing? (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The advantage of seeking the Lord
I. the character here specified.
1. They have been given to see and feel the necessity of seeking the Lord.
2. They have sought the Lord in the appointed way.
3. Seeking the Lord is a constant duty.
4. They seek Him with earnestness and diligence.
II. the advantage of seeking the Lord. They shall not want any good thing–
1. Connected with their salvation or acceptance with God.
2. Connected with Divine providence.
3. Necessary for their protection and guidance through the wilderness of this world.
4. To comfort them in darkness and trouble.
5. In reference to communion with God.
6. As respects support in death.
7. To secure their safe arrival in heaven.
III. application.
1. Learn to trace all this goodness to its proper source. God has given you His choicest gift, even Christ, therefore the inferior ones will not be withheld (Rom 8:32).
2. As nothing human can ever become a substitute for the Divine care, constantly live in its enjoyment.
3. How great must be the poverty and wretchedness of the sinner. He is destitute of all these good things. (Helps for the Pulpit.)
Struggling and seeking
I. the struggle that always fails. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger. The suggestion is, that the men whose lives are one long fight to appropriate to themselves more and more of outward good, are living a kind of life that is fitter for beasts than for men. What is the true character of the lives of the majority of people but a fight, a desire to have, and a failure to obtain? Beasts of prey, naturalists tell us, are always lean. It is the graminivorous order that meekly and peacefully crop the pastures that are well fed and in good condition–which things are an allegory. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger. There is no satisfaction or success ever to be won by this way of fighting and scheming and springing at the prey. For if we do not utterly fail, which is the lot of so many of us, still partial success has little power of bringing perfect satisfaction to a human spirit. You remember the old story of the Arabian Nights, about the wonderful palace that was built by magic, and all whose windows were set in precious stones, but there was one window that remained unadorned, and that spoiled all for the owner. His palace was full of treasures, but an enemy looked on all the wealth and suggested a previously unnoticed defect by saying, You have not a toes egg. He had never thought about getting a rocs egg, and did not know what it was. But the consciousness of something lacking bad been roused, and it marred his enjoyment of what he had and drove him to set out on his travels to secure the missing thing. There is always something lacking, for our desires grow far faster than their satisfactions, and the more we have the wider our longing reaches out, so that as the wise old Book has it, He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase. You cannot fill a soul with the whole universe, if you do not put God in it.
II. the seeking which always finds. Now, how do we seek the Lord? We do not seek Him as if He had not sought us, or was hiding from us. But our search of Him is search after one who is near every one of us, and who delights in nothing so much as in pouring Himself into every heart. It is a short search that the child by her mothers skirts, or her fathers side, has to make for mother or father. It is a shorter search that we have to make for God. We seek Him by desire, by communion, by obedience. And they who thus seek Him find Him in the act of seeking Him, just as certainly as if I open my eye I see the sun, as if I dilate my lungs the atmosphere rushes into them. For He is always seeking us. The leather seeketh such to worship Him. So that if we do seek Him, we shall surely find. We each of us have, accurately and precisely, as much of God as we desire to have. If there is only a very little of the Water of Life in our vessels, it is because we do not care to possess any more. Seek, and ye shall find. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 10. The young lions do lack] Instead of kephirim, the young lions, one of Kennicott’s MSS. has cabbirim, “powerful men.” The Vulgate, Septuagint, AEthiopic, Syriac, Arabic, and Anglo-Saxon have the same reading. Houbigant approves of this; and indeed the sense and connection seem to require it. My old Psalter reads: – The Ryche had nede; and thai hungerd: but sekand Lard sal noght be lessed of alle gode. That es, says the paraphrase, with outen lessyng thai sal have God; that es alle gode; for in God is al gode.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The young lions; either,
1. Properly: see Job 4:11. Or,
2. Metaphorically so called, the great potentates of the earth, who are oft so called, as Jer 2:15; Eze 38:13; Nah 2:13.
Shall not want any good thing, which is necessary and truly good for them, all circumstances considered; of which God alone is a competent judge. And therefore although God doth usually take a special care to supply the wants of good men, and hath oft done it by extraordinary ways, when ordinary have failed, yet sometimes he knows, and it is certainly true, that wants and crosses are more needful and useful to them than bread, and in such cases it is a greater mercy of God to deny them supplies than to grant them.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
10. not want any good“good”is emphatic; they may be afflicted (compare Ps34:10); but this may be a good (2Co 4:17;2Co 4:18; Heb 12:10;Heb 12:11).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger,…. According to Apollinarius,
“the needy rich, whom famine presses;”
see Job 4:10;
but they that seek the Lord; by prayer, diligently, with their whole heart, and in the sincerity of their souls; the Targum is, “that seek the doctrine of the Lord”; that seek instruction from him, and to be taught by him: these
shall not want any good [thing]: which God has purposed to bestow upon them, which he has promised unto them, and provided for them; nor any thing that shall be for their good.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The Psalmist illustrates this doctrine by a very apposite comparison, namely, that God provides every thing necessary for his people, and relieves their wants, whilst the lions, which surpass in ferocity all the wild beasts of the earth, prowl about in a famishing condition for their prey. Some think, that under the name of lions, those men who are addicted to violence and plunder are metaphorically described; but this, in my opinion, is too refined. David simply asserts, that those who guard against all unrighteousness should profit more by so doing than by rapine and plunder; because the Lord feeds his people, while even the lions and other beasts of prey often suffer hunger. What he says, then, is, that sooner shall the lions perish with hunger and want, than God will disappoint of their necessary food the righteous and sincere, who, content with his blessing alone, seek their food only from his hand. Whoever, therefore, shall in this way cast his cares upon God, and confide implicitly in his paternal goodness and bounty, shall live quietly and peaceably among men, and suffer no injury. If it is objected, that the good and the virtuous are not always exempted from penury, I answer, that the hand of God is stretched out to succor them in due season, when they are reduced to the greatest straits, and know not to what side to turn, (695) so that the issue always shows that we seek not in vain from him whatever is necessary to the sustenance of life.
(695) “ Et ne s’avent plus de quel cost a se tourner.” — Fr.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(10) Young lions.See Note, Psa. 17:12. The young lion is the emblem of power and self-resource. Yet these sometimes lack, but the earnest seekers after Divine truth and righteousness never. Instead of lions, the LXX. and Vulgate have the rich.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
10. Young lions The lion is referred to as being the strongest beast of the forest known to Palestine, and hence able to secure his food; and the young lion is one in full strength and agility, distinguished from the whelp and the old lion. These may lack and suffer hunger, but not they who seek the Lord.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 34:10. The young lions do lack All the ancient versions, except the Chaldee, read great, powerful men, instead of young lions; and Houbigant renders the place, rich men are become poor and hungry; but they who seek the Lord, &c. This sense is undoubtedly good: but I see nothing to object against our own reading; for the meaning is, that if God takes care of the beasts of the field, much more will he take care of them that fear him; and much sooner suffer those to die for want of their prey, than these to perish through the want of necessaries or the failure of his protection. The original word kphirim, signifies rather lions of prey, than young lions. See Chandler and Schultens on Pro 30:12.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Psa 34:10 The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good [thing].
Ver. 10. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger ] And yet they will have it, if it is to be had. Haec est sceleratorum imago, saith Beza. Lionlike wicked oppressors, rich cormorants, as the Septuagint render it, who live on the spoil of poor people, and are never satisfied, do yet perish with famine, as Eliphaz saith of the old lion, Job 4:11 ; and come oft to great poverty, so that they pine away and miserably perish, Donec misere tabescant (Beza.)
But they that seek the Lord
Shall not want any good thing
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psalms
STRUGGLING AND SEEKING
Psa 34:10
If we may trust the superscription of this psalm, it was written by David at one of the very darkest days of his wanderings, probably in the Cave of Adullam, where he had gathered around him a band of outlaws, and was living, to all appearance, a life uncommonly like that of a brigand chief, in the hills. One might have pardoned him if, at such a moment, some cloud of doubt or despondency had crept over his soul. But instead of that his words are running over with gladness, and the psalm begins ‘I will bless the Lord at all times, and His praise shall continually be in my mouth.’ Similarly here he avers, even at a moment when he wanted a great deal of what the world calls ‘good,’ that ‘they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.’ There were lions in Palestine in David’s time. He had had a fight with one of them, as you may remember, and his lurking place was probably not far off the scene of Samson’s exploits. Very likely they were prowling about the rocky mouth of the cave, and he weaves their howls into his psalm: ‘The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good.’
So, then, here are the two thoughts-the struggle that always fails and the seeking that always finds.
I. The struggle that always fails.
‘The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger’-and that, being interpreted, just states the fact to which every man’s experience, and the observation of every man that has an eye in his head, distinctly say, ‘Amen, it is so.’ For there is no satisfaction or success ever to be won by this way of fighting and struggling and scheming and springing at the prey. For if we do not utterly fail, which is the lot of so many of us, still partial success has little power of bringing perfect satisfaction to a human spirit. One loss counterbalances any number of gains. No matter how soft is the mattress, if there is one tiny thorn sticking up through it all the softness goes for nothing. There is always a Mordecai sitting at the gate when Haman goes prancing through it on his white horse; and the presence of the unsympathetic and stiff-backed Jew, sitting stolid at the gate, takes the gilt off the gingerbread, and embitters the enjoyment. So men count up their disappointments, and forget all their fulfilled hopes, count up their losses and forget their gains. They think less of the thousands that they have gained than of the half-crown that they were cheated of.
In every way it is true that the little annoyances, like a grain of dust in the sensitive eye, take all the sweetness out of mere material good, and I suppose that there are no more bitterly disappointed men in this world than the perfectly ‘successful men,’ as the world counts them. They have been disillusionised in the process of acquisition. When they were young and lusted after earthly good things, these seemed to be all that they needed. When they are old, and have them, they find that they are feeding on ashes, and the grit breaks their teeth, and irritates their tongues. The ‘young lions do lack’ even when their roar and their spring ‘have secured the prey,’ and ‘they suffer hunger’ even when they have fed full. Ay! for if the utmost possible measure of success were granted us, in any department in which the way of getting the thing is this fighting and effort, we should be as far away from being at rest as ever we were.
You remember the old story of the Arabian Nights , about the wonderful palace that was built by magic, and all whose windows were set in precious stones, but there was one window that remained unadorned, and that spoiled all for the owner. His palace was full of treasures, but an enemy looked on all the wealth and suggested a previously unnoticed defect by saying, ‘You have not a roc’s egg.’ He had never thought about getting a roc’s egg, and did not know what it was. But the consciousness of something lacking had been roused, and it marred his enjoyment of what he had and drove him to set out on his travels to secure the missing thing. There is always something lacking, for our desires grow far faster than their satisfactions, and the more we have, the wider our longing reaches out, so that as the wise old Book has it, ‘He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase.’ You cannot fill a soul with the whole universe, if you do not put God in it. One of the greatest works of fiction of modern times ends, or all but ends, with a sentence something like this, ‘Ah! who of us has what he wanted, or having it, is satisfied?’ ‘The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger’-and the struggle always fails-’but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.’
II. The seeking which always finds.
We seek Him by desire. Do you want Him? A great many of us do not. We seek Him by communion, by turning our thoughts to Him, amidst all the rush of daily life, and such a turning of thought to Him, which is quite possible, will prevent our most earnest working upon things material from descending to the likeness of the lions’ fighting for it. We seek Him by desire, by communion, by obedience. And they who thus seek Him find Him in the act of seeking Him, just as certainly as if I open my eye I see the sun, or as if I dilate my lungs the atmosphere rushes into them. For He is always seeking us. That is a beautiful word of our Lord’s to which we do not always attach all its value, ‘The Father seeketh such to worship Him.’ Why put the emphasis upon the ‘such,’ as if it was a definition of the only kind of acceptable worship? It is that. But we might put more emphasis upon the ‘seeketh’ without spoiling the logic of the sentence; and thereby we should come nearer the truth of what God’s heart to us is, so that if we do seek Him, we shall surely find. In this region, and in this region only, there is no search that is vain, there is no effort that is foiled, there is no desire unaccomplished, there is no failure possible. We each of us have, accurately and precisely, as much of God as we desire to have. If there is only a very little of the Water of Life in our vessels, it is because we did not care to possess any more. ‘Seek, and ye shall find.’
We shall be sure to find everything in God. Look at the grand confidence, and the utterance of a life’s experience in these great words: ‘Shall not want any good.’ For God is everything to us, and everything else is nothing; and it is the presence of God in anything that makes it truly able to satisfy our desires. Human love, sweet and precious, dearest and best of all earthly possessions as it is, fails to fill a heart unless the love grasps God as well as the beloved dying creature. And so with regard to all other things. They are good when God is in them, and when they are ours in God. They are nought when wrenched away from Him. We are sure to find everything in Him, for this is the very property of that infinite divine nature that is waiting to impart itself to us, that, like water poured into a vessel, it will take the shape of the vessel into which it is poured. Whatever is my need, the one God will supply it all.
You remember the old Rabbinical tradition which speaks a deep truth, dressed in a fanciful shape. It says that the manna in the wilderness tasted to every man just what he desired, whatever dainty or nutriment he most wished; that the manna became like the magic cup in the old fairy legends, out of which could be poured any precious liquor at the pleasure of the man who was to drink it. The one God is everything to us all, anything that we desire, and the thing that we need; Protean in His manifestations, one in His sufficiency. With Him, as well as in Him, we are sure to have all that we require. ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom . . . and all these things shall be added unto you.’
Let us begin, dear brethren! with seeking, and then our struggling will not be violent, nor self-willed, nor will it fail. If we begin with seeking, and have God, be sure that all we need we shall get, and that what we do not get we do not need. It is hard to believe it when our vehement wishes go out to something that His serene wisdom does not send. It is hard to believe it when our bleeding hearts are being wrenched away from something around which they have clung. But it is true for all that. And he that can say, ‘Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee,’ will find that the things which he enjoys in subordination to his one supreme good are a thousand times more precious when they are regarded as second than they ever could be when our folly tried to make them first. ‘Seek first the Kingdom,’ and be contented that the ‘other things’ shall be appendices, additions, over and above the one thing that is needful.
Now, all that is very old-fashioned, threadbare truth. Dear brethren! if we believed it, and lived by it, ‘the peace of God which passes understanding’ would ‘keep our hearts and minds.’ And, instead of fighting and losing, and desiring to have and howling out because we cannot obtain, we should patiently wait before Him, submissively ask, earnestly seek, immediately find, and always possess and be satisfied with, the one good for body, soul, and spirit, which is God Himself.
‘There be many that cry, Oh! that one would show as any good.’ The wise do not cry to men, but pray to God. ‘Lord! lift Thou the light of Thy countenance upon us.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
lions: Psa 104:21, Job 4:10, Job 4:11, Luk 1:51-53
but: Psa 84:11, Mat 6:32
Reciprocal: 1Sa 2:5 – full 1Sa 30:19 – General 1Ki 17:6 – the ravens 1Ki 19:5 – an angel Neh 9:21 – their Job 18:12 – hungerbitten Job 38:39 – Wilt Psa 23:1 – I shall Psa 37:3 – be fed Psa 107:9 – General Psa 111:5 – hath given Pro 10:3 – will Pro 13:25 – righteous Pro 22:4 – By Isa 33:16 – bread Isa 40:30 – General Isa 58:11 – and satisfy Isa 65:13 – my servants shall eat Jer 37:21 – and that Jer 51:38 – roar Mat 6:11 – General Mat 6:33 – and all Luk 1:53 – filled Luk 11:9 – seek Luk 22:35 – lacked Act 4:34 – was
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
34:10 The young {f} lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not {g} want any good [thing].
(f) The godly by their patient obedience profit more than they who ravage and spoil.
(g) If they abide the last trial.