West Asia is currently aflame. On February 28, 2026, Israel and the United States launched an attack on Iran, after talks between the US and Iran broke down.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, named the military operation ‘Roaring Lion’, The Times of Israel reported. The Israeli Defence Forces, it said, had a different name for the operation (‘Shield of Judah’, according to various media reports). President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has named the operation as ‘Epic Fury’.
Israel had also named its last military operation against Iran in June 2025 as ‘Rising Lion’.
Why this focus on the lion (Panthera leo), one may ask? The reason is the iconic status of the world’s second-largest cat in Biblical literature.
Lions today are associated mostly with the African continent, specifically sub-Saharan Africa, where they number around 20,000 in the wild.
But they were once present in North Africa as well. The Barbary Lion was used by the Roman Empire in its gladiatorial games as well as to infamously kill early Christians in the Colosseum at Rome.
However, east of the Sinai Peninsula, it was the Asiatic Lion (Panthera leo persica) that lorded over much of the Middle East (West Asia) and the Indian subcontinent.
In 2017, scientists reclassified lions into ‘northern’ (Panthera leo leo including west and central African and Asiatic lions) and ‘southern’ (Panthera leo melanochaita or southern and east African lions).
Like in the Indian subcontinent and ancient Iran, the Holy Land too has been witness to a long leonine presence. According to archaeological research and historical records, the Asiatic lion existed in the region from the Natufian culture (circa 9,500 years ago) through the Bronze and Iron Ages. The valley of the Jordan river was a stronghold of the lion in the Holy Land although they ranged widely across the region.
The lion presence in the Holy Land came to an end during the Crusades, the series of medieval conflicts between Christians and Muslims (c. 1200-1300 Common Era) for the control of the Holy Land.
But not before they had left an everlasting impact on the region.
The Hebrew Bible, the collection of scriptures that also forms the basis of the Christian Old Testament, refers to lions over 150 times. These references are allegorical as well as realistic. This is an indication that lions were well-known to the inhabitants of ‘Canaan’ and Biblical Israel.
Indeed, the majesty of the animal inspired comparisons with the Divine. The God of Israel, described by the tetragrammaton YHWH and transcribed as ‘Yahweh’, is Himself compared to a lion in the scripture.
“Many texts of the Bible reflect the regard in which this beast was held. Throughout the Bible Israel’s enemies were described using the images of the power, speed, and ferocity of the lion. The lion is a “symbol of might” in Scripture. YHWH Himself is compared to a lion in His dealings with Israel and against the enemies of Israel,” writes John Roskoski from St. Peter’s University, Omega Bible Institute in the United States.
One of the first references to lions in the Hebrew Bible comes from Genesis, one of the five books that forms the Pentateuch or the Torah — the others being Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
It deals with the Hebrew patriarch Jacob (also known as Israel). Jacob is the son of Isaac, the nephew of Ishmael and the grandson of Abraham. He has two wives, Leah and Rachel. Through them and their handmaidens, Bihah and Zilpah, Jacob is the father of 12 sons and 1 daughter. These 12 sons are the progenitors of the 12 tribes of Israel.
Among his 12 sons is Judah. He is the son of Jacob and Leah. In Genesis 49:9, he is spoke of thus (as translated by Roskoski):
Judah, a lion’s whelp
From prey you have risen, my son:
He bends low, he crouches like a lion
And like a lion- who would rouse him
Roskoski writes that this verse “speaks to the supremacy of the tribe of Judah”. Indeed, Jacob, before dying, had made Judah his lead heir.
“It also foreshadows the primary role among the tribes which Judah would assume during the Davidic Monarchy,” adds Roskoski.
‘Judah’ later became the name of a kingdom in the Land of Israel as well as the source of the term ‘Judea’ and the Jewish people themselves.
In his description of Judah, Roskoski writes that “the roar of the lion is, usually, associated with the male of the species and was a familiar and terrifying sound in ancient Israel”.
The next references to lions in the Hebrew Bible are those from the lives of Samson and David.
Samson is a ‘Judge of Israel’, the last of them. Judges were tribal and military leaders who were raised by Yahweh to deliver Israel during times of crisis.
Samson is born at a time when Biblical Israel is threatened by the might of the Philistines, the so-called ‘Sea Peoples’ who migrated to and settled in the Holy Land.
Archaeological research shows ‘Philistia’ to be a territory concentrated on five city-states in what is today Southern Israel-Palestine: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath.
Samson was a ‘Nazirite’, a person who was sworn into the service of God. Such a person was to let his hair and beard grow and never take any strong drink or intoxicant.
The most famous incident regarding Samson is his fight with a lion. Once travelling in the “vineyards of Timnah”, Samson was attacked by a male lion. The Bible says that the Judge, endowed with superhuman strength, tore the animals into pieces with his bare hands.
“The account relies heavily on the motif, recurrent in the Ancient Near East, of a young hero vanquishing a lion. It serves as a narrative “rite of passage” in many heroic traditions; Herakles, Gilgamesh, and David, for example. Samson is now ready to undertake his mission,” writes Roskoski.
That mission is “to begin the deliverance of Israel from the hand of the Philistines (Judges 13:5)”, says Roskoski.
The story of the fight between David, the young shepherd boy and the giant Goliath is classic ‘triumph of the underdog’ stuff.
David descended from Judah, the son of Jacob, through his son Perez. He is a favourite of Saul, King of Israel. After Saul and his son Jonathan are killed in battle with the Philistines, David becomes the king of Israel and makes Jerusalem, its capital. He is also the ancestor of Jesus.
“David, in 1 Samuel 17:32-37, claimed to have killed lions, and bears, when he was speaking to King Saul about facing Goliath,” writes Roskoski.
He adds that, “…In the person of David we are now able to see the embodiment of leonine Judahite king. No longer is the image a foreshadowing of the power and ferocity of the lion cub, which is the tribe of Judah in Genesis 49. No longer are the lion and the hero paralleling each other, as in the Samson account. Now David sits on the Judahite throne, in Jerusalem, as the full grown and fearsome lion; the archetypical “lion of Judah”. However, his authority still relies on YHWH, the lion of Israel, who defends and admonishes the people. The Davidic Kingship was always to be charismatic (1 Samuel 16:13) and, therefore, established on the power and Spirit of YHWH…”
The lion is thus a powerful symbol in Judaism, as it is in other traditions. Interestingly, the big cat holds a pride of place among the Arabs too. Ishamel, the brother of Isaac and elder son of Abraham, is widely held to be the ancestor of the tribes of northern Arabia.
Lions are thus part of the collective consciousness of the people of West Asia, whether Arabs or Jews, Muslims or Christians, Persians or Mesopotamians. Only a millennia-long association between humans and big cats could have enabled such a cultural impact. And while it is no longer extant in the region, it still rules and holds sway.