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In any given culture the more words you have for something the more important it probably is.  Eskimos I hear have over a dozen words for snow.  

So the Hebrew Bible has 5 words for Lion.  First I noticed Shekel, meaning lion.  This ties to a post I already  made on Shekeleth an ingredient for the incence of the golden altar in Exodus 30:4, an interesting deep sea word picture.

Then I started seeing other ones like Ari, or Layish, or Lawbee, or Kephar.  Kephar can mean a city.  Lawbee is a rip your heart out female Lion as I recall.

But here is the new interesting idea.  Connecting it to the judgement image of watered to dry in Deut. 30:19, could this fit the Layish dough mixing lion image?  You put in the flour, like the lion kicking up dust catching the prey.  You mix the dough, like the lion with paws hitting the prey.  So a cosmic lion will get you it means in Deut. 30:19.  Or Layish is an old lion who doesn't bite but instead paws you to death?

It does? Where precisely?

T0 HaRav Yisroel Ben Avraham-

Thanks for asking me about the shekel word.  I think I made a mistake on the adress of this exact one.  It is the Shekeleth that is the ingredient in the golden altar incense in Exodus 30:34.

Where exactly the other words are used I don't know.

Actually, I didn't mean to quote the bit about the Shekel. My question was where the 5 words for lion come where they actually mean "lion".

To Harav Yisroel Avraham-

I still haven't gone through all the verses with my concordance.  I am not a Hebrew expert.  I think what could be causeing some confusion here would be if the word for lion was a root word in semitic languages that isn't actually used in the Bible except in a related word that doesn't exactly mean lion.

You know, they didn't put lion oil in the incense.  It was a molusk that somehow reminded them of a lion so it is a related word in the various shadowy associations of the language.

TO Rabbi-
I looked in my concordance and without the exact references I can still tell you some of where the important usages are.

Israel lays down as an ari young plucking gatherin lion in Gen 49:9 and rises up as an old female heart ripping out Lawbe lion.

Balam reiterates these things in his prophecies in Numbers/Bamidbar twice.

Shekel is a word for lion used in Job 14:10 as I recall.  It is poetic and he uses several differnt words for lion.

A bible dictionary said shekel might be a black lion.  Sakar is a word for black and slimilar.  Or it is about the roar similar to brayings word in Hebrew.  Maybe it can be both or either.

I think it is Kapheer not Kaphar.

Also the Bible dictionary said Lions in Canan land were round and shorter than african lions being the asiatic version.