SUBJECT:  The Unicorn

QUESTION: Were there really unicorns?  What were they?

ANSWER

“Unicorn” is seen six times in the King James Bible.

1] God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn. -Numbers 23:22

2] God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn: he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows. -Numbers 24:8

3-4] Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?  Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?   - Job 39:9-10

5] He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn. -Psalm 29:6

6] But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil. Psalm 92:10

Here is what the commentaries say:

An unicorn - A wild bull, the now extinct Aurochs, formidable for its size, strength, speed, and ferocity. ~Barnes Notes

[The strength of a unicorn - ראם  reem and ראים  reim.] It is generally allowed that there is no such beast in nature as the unicorn; i. e., a creature of the horse kind, with one long rich curled horn in the forehead. The creature painted from fancy is represented as one of the supporters of the royal arms of Great Britain. It is difficult to say what kind of beast is intended by the original word. The Septuagint translate the word μονοκερως, the unicorn, or one-horned animal; the Vulgate, sometimes, unicornus; and in the text rhinocerotis, by which the rhinoceros, a creature which has its name from the horn on its nose, is supposed to be meant. That no single-horned animal can be intended by the reem of Moses, is sufficiently evident from this, that Moses, speaking of Joseph, says, “he has the Horns of A unicorn,” or reem, where the horns are spoken of in the plural, the animal in the singular. The creature referred to is either the rhinoceros, some varieties of which have two horns on the nose, or the wild bull, urus, or buffalo; though some think the beast intended is a species of goat; but the rhinoceros seems the most likely. There is literally a monoceros, or unicorn, with one large curled ivory horn growing horizontally out of his snout; but this is not a land animal, it is the modiodan or nurwal, a marine animal of the whale kind, a horn of which is now before me, measuring seven feet four inches; but I believe the rhinoceros is that intended by the sacred writers. ~Adam Clarke

Whether the rhinoceros or the wild ox, or one kind of goats, as Bochart (l) thinks; whatever is meant by the term here must be a strong creature. ~John Gill

[He hath as it were the strength of an unicorn] — Israel is not as they were at the Exodus, a horde of poor, feeble, spiritless people, but powerful and invincible as a reem - that is, a rhinoceros (Job 39:9; Psalm 22:21; Psalm 92:10). ~JFB