The prophet asks, as if in consternation at the complete collapse of the great city—Where is the site of Nineveh? Where is the dwelling (den) of the lions? The lion is a natural symbol of Assyria, both from that animal's cruel, predatory; ravenous habits, and from its use as the chief national emblem.
Nergal, the war god, has a winged lion with a man's face as his emblem. See the figure in Rawlinson, 'Anc. Mon.,' 1:173, who adds that the lion is accepted as a true type of the people, blood, ravin, and robbery being their characteristics in the mind of the prophet.
The feeding place of the young lions may mean the subject lands whence they took their prey. And the old lion; rather, the lioness. The lion is designated by different names, which may, perhaps, refer to the various satraps and chieftains of the Assyrian kingdom.
There are the full-grown male lion, the lioness, the young lion able to seek its own food, and the whelp too young to find its own living. Instead of" the lioness." the LXX; Vulgate, and Syriac, reading differently, give, ταῦεἰσελθεῖν, ut ingrederetur, "that the lion's whelp should enter there."
And none made them afraid. They lived in perfect security, without fear or care, irresistible in might (Le 26:6; Micah 4:4; Zephaniah 3:13).