The Lord sent lions among them - The land being deprived of its inhabitants, wild beasts would necessarily increase, even without any supernatural intervention; and this the superstitious new comers supposed to be a plague sent upon them, because they did not know how to worship him who was the God of the land; for they thought, like other heathens that every district had its own tutelary deity. Yet it is likely that God did send lions as a scourge on this bad people.
The depopulation of the country, insufficiently remedied by the influx of foreigners, had the natural consequence of multiplying the wild beasts and making them bolder. Probably a certain number had always lurked in the jungle along the course of the Jordan Jeremiah 49:19; Jeremiah 50:44; and these now ventured into the hill country, and perhaps even into the cities. The colonists regarded their sufferings from the lions as a judgment upon them from “the god of the land” (2 Kings 17:26; compare 1 Kings 20:23 note).