Unicorn

The "unicorn" of the Authorized Version (nine occurrences: Num. 23:22; 24:8; Deut. 33:17; Job 39:9, 10; Ps. 22:21; 29:6; 92:10; Isa. 34:7) translates the Hebrew re'em, which the Revised Version consistently renders as "wild ox" (with "ox-antelope" in the margin at some places). The re'em was evidently a large, powerful, and untameable animal — described as impossible to domesticate or yoke (Job 39:9–10), associated with great strength (Num. 23:22), and used as an emblem of power in both blessing and judgment. The Septuagint translated it monokeros (one-horned) — the origin of the unicorn tradition in Western translation.

Modern scholars generally identify the re'em with the aurochs (Bos primigenius), the ancestor of domestic cattle, which was indeed a massive and ferocious wild ox attested in Mesopotamian art as a symbol of royal and divine power. The aurochs was extinct in Palestine by the first millennium B.C. but was known in earlier periods, explaining both its power in folk memory and the difficulty of precise translation.