The Young Lions' Hunger: Struggle's Perpetual Failure

David, hidden in the Cave of Adullam with his band of outlaws, surrounded by the actual lions of Palestine, seized upon these beasts as Nature's sermon. The young lions—supreme in strength, armed with teeth and claws, possessed of lithe spring and predatory cunning—nonetheless 'lack, and suffer hunger.' Maclaren drives the comparison home with unsparing clarity: the men whose entire existence is 'one long fight to appropriate to themselves more and more of outward good' are living a life 'fitter for beasts than for men.' The fierce struggle for material possession, the 'murderous competition' of cities, the endless scheming and springing at prey—this is the existence of brutes, not humans.

Naturalists confirm it: beasts of prey are always lean. Only the grass-eating animals that 'meekly and peacefully crop the pastures' are well-fed and in good condition. Even when the violent competitor does not 'utterly fail'—which is the lot of so many—partial success brings the human spirit no satisfaction. The appetite merely grows with eating. There is no satiation in the struggle itself, only an ever-renewed hunger.

Yet David's psalm sings in the darkness. He possessed nothing by the world's reckoning, yet his mouth overflowed with gladness. The contrast blazes: 'The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.' The seeker finds what the fighter never obtains—not through violence, but through Yahweh's provision. This is not metaphor; it is observed, testified fact that every eye can verify.