1 Kings 13:24

24 When he left, a lion found him on the road and killed him, and his dead body [was] thrown on the road with the donkey standing beside it, and the lion [was] standing by the dead body.

1 Kings 13:24 Meaning and Commentary

1 Kings 13:24

And when he was gone, a lion met him by the way, and slew him,
&c.] Perhaps not far from Bethel; and this lion might come out of the same wood the she bears did, that devoured the children that mocked the prophet, as Bishop Patrick conjectures, ( 2 Kings 2:23 2 Kings 2:24 ) and his carcass was cast in the way;
in the high road, where it seems the lion seized him, and he fell: and the ass stood by it;
disregarded and unhurt by the lion, though the prophet was pulled off of the back of him: the lion also stood by the carcass:
not offering to tear it in pieces and devour it, but rather, as if he was the guard of it, to keep off all others from meddling with it; these circumstances are very surprising, and show the thing to be of God; for when the lion had done what he had a commission to do, which was to kill the prophet, he was to do no more.

1 Kings 13:24 In-Context

22 but you have returned and have eaten food and drank water in the place which he ordered you not to eat food nor to drink water, then your dead body shall not return to the tomb of your ancestors.'"

23 It happened after he ate food and drank water that he saddled the donkey for the prophet whom he had brought back.

24 When he left, a lion found him on the road and killed him, and his dead body [was] thrown on the road with the donkey standing beside it, and the lion [was] standing by the dead body.

25 As men [were] passing by and they saw the dead body thrown in the road and the lion standing beside the dead body, they came and told it in the city where the old prophet [was] living.

26 When the prophet who had brought him back from the way heard, he said, "It [is] the man of God who disobeyed the mouth of Yahweh, and Yahweh has given him to the lion. He tore him in pieces and killed him according to the word of Yahweh which he had spoken to him."