Unicorn (Wild Ox, R. V.)

The unicorn of the older English Bibles is, the Revised Version notes, the wild-ox — an untamed, double-horned creature whose strength sits at the top of the Hebrew imagination's beast register. UPDV consistently follows the Revised reading and prints "wild-ox" or "wild-oxen" wherever the King James Version printed "unicorn." The animal appears in Scripture in two registers at once: as a real creature whose intractability and goring power lie outside human management, and as a figure for divine deliverance, royal strength, and corporate elevation.

The Untameable Beast

The book of Job sets the wild-ox alongside Yahweh's other emblems of creaturely freedom in the great challenge from the whirlwind. The animal is interrogated for its refusal to enter human service: "Will the wild-ox be content to serve you? Or will he spend the night by your crib?" (Job 39:9). The crib-question grades the wild-ox specifically against the domesticated bullock that does eat from a manger; the animal is exhibited as the beast that will not.

The next verse extends the same point into the field. "Can you bind the wild-ox with his band in the furrow? Or will he harrow the valleys after you?" (Job 39:10). The plow-band and the harrow are the domesticated ox's tools; the wild-ox is the figure of the creature for which those tools were never designed. The same row sits inside the agricultural register that Yahweh uses to display the limits of human husbandry, and inside the cord-and-band register that runs through Scripture as the mark of binding and constraint — the wild-ox is the animal the cord cannot hold.

Yahweh's challenge presses further into the labour-economy of the threshing-floor: "Will you trust him, because his strength is great? Or will you leave to him your labor? Will you confide in him, that he will bring home your seed, And gather [the grain] of your threshing-floor?" (Job 39:11-12). The strength is acknowledged; what is denied is the trust that would put a harvest in the wild-ox's hands. The whole movement (Job 39:9-12) exhibits the animal as great in strength yet outside the contract of agricultural service.

The Horn That Pushes the Peoples

The wild-ox enters the blessing-oracles as a horn-figure. Moses' blessing of Joseph reads: "The firstborn of his herd, majesty is his; And his horns are the horns of the wild-ox: With them he will push the peoples all of them, [even] the ends of the earth: And they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, And they are the thousands of Manasseh" (Deut 33:17). The horns-of-the-wild-ox simile grades Joseph's military reach at the strongest beast-horn register available; the goring-verb extends the goring across "all" the peoples to the "ends of the earth"; and the closing identifications fasten the wild-ox horns specifically on Ephraim's ten-thousands and Manasseh's thousands, exhibiting the wild-ox-horn as the corporate emblem of the Joseph tribes.

Balaam's third oracle takes up the same figure for the nation as a whole: "God brings them forth out of Egypt; He has as it were the strength of the wild-ox" (Num 23:22). His fourth oracle reuses the wild-ox phrase and grades the strength as world-shaking: "God brings him forth out of Egypt; He has as it were the strength of the wild-ox: He will eat up the nations his adversaries, And will break their bones in pieces, And strike [them] through with his arrows" (Num 24:8). The wild-ox stands as the mediating-image between Egypt and the nations — Israel exhibited at wild-ox tier, eating up adversaries and breaking their bones.

The plea of Psalm 22 turns the same horn-image into a cry for rescue: "Save me from the lion's mouth; Yes, from the horns of the wild-oxen you have answered me" (Ps 22:21). The lion's mouth and the wild-oxen's horns stand together as paired images of the killing-power the speaker is delivered from; the wild-ox horns are the perfect counterpart to the lion's jaw, both registered at the top of the predator scale.

My Horn Like the Wild-Ox

Psalm 92 takes the figure into a personal worship-register: "But my horn you have exalted like [the horn of] the wild-ox: I am anointed with fresh oil" (Ps 92:10). The exaltation of the speaker's own horn is graded by the wild-ox simile at untamed-strength register rather than at domesticated-bull register; the editorial supply [the horn of] completes the comparison. The fresh-oil anointing in the parallel line couples the wild-ox horn-lift with a consecratory pour, so the worshipper's horn-elevation is paired with sacramental oil as twin signs of divine favour against the wicked of the surrounding verses.

The Voice That Makes Them Skip

Psalm 29 absorbs the wild-ox into the storm-theophany of Yahweh's voice: "He makes them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young wild-ox" (Ps 29:6). The cedars Yahweh's voice has just shattered are the subject of the skip; the comparison-vehicles are the calf and the young wild-ox. The young-wild-ox simile registers the mountains' jolting as the leap of the unbroken animal.

Wild-Oxen at the Day of Judgment

The wild-ox appears once at the eschatological slaughter-scene. In the oracle against Edom, "the wild-oxen will come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls: and their land will be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness" (Isa 34:7). The wild-oxen, bullocks, and bulls form a graded slaughter-list — the strongest cattle-class included with the herd-classes — so that the day of Yahweh's judgment is figured as a sacrifice in which even the wild-ox is brought down and the land itself is saturated with the resulting blood and fat.