Job 39:9

will the unicorn Rather, the wild ox (Heb. reém, or, rém). From the allusions to this creature in Scripture two things may be inferred with some certainty, (1) that the animal had twohorns: Deuteronomy 33:17 "his horns are like the horns of an unicorn"; comp. Numbers 23:22; Numbers 24:8 (where for "strength" some such words as "towering horns" should be read, see on ch. Job 22:25), Psalms 22:21; and (2) that the animal was considered to belong to the ox tribe. This appears from the present passage, where it is contrasted with the domestic ox, the labours of which it was fitted to perform if its disposition had not been untameable; and from two other passages, in both of which it is brought into connexion with the ox: Psalms 29:6, "He maketh them to skip like a calf, Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn", and Isaiah 34:7, "And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls." The reémwas probably either the animal called by the Germans Auerochs(Bos primigenius) or "primitive ox," now extinct all over the world, or the bison, which still lingers in scanty numbers in one or two parts. The Arabs give the name ri'mto the white antelope. The translation "unicorn" came from the Sept. μονοκέρως. A one-horned animal, though abundantly testified to by travellers, probably exists only in the imagination. Jerome adheres to the general "unicorns" in Psalms 22:21 and Isaiah 34:7, but usually he renders "rhinoceros," the nearest approach to a "unicorn" that exists in the world of reality. "The Unicorne, as Lewes Vartinian testifieth, who saw two of them in the towne of Mecha, is of the height of a yoong horse or colt of 30 moneths old, hee hath the head of a Hart, and in his forehead he hath a sharpe pointed home three cubites long … His horne is of a merueilous greate force and vertue against venome and poyson" (see Wright, Bible Word-Book).

The point of the passage lies not so much in the terrible attributes of the creature himself, as in the contrast between him and the tame ox, which he externally resembled. He was fitted for all the labour performed by the domestic animal, but was wild and untameable. Man uses the one, let him lay his hand upon the other and subdue him to his service! Who is the author of this strange diversity of disposition in creatures so like in outward form?