There Are No Unicorns In the Bible

In his 1875 book Animals of the Bible, John Worcester puts to rest any remaining speculation that unicorns are mentioned in Scripture.

There is one other animal mentioned in the Scriptures which should be noticed here; and that is the “Unicorn.” The name “unicorn” is a translator’s mistake. The Bible says that the animal has “horns,” not one horn (Deuteronomy 33:17, Hebrew); and further, that it was fit for sacrifice (Isaiah 34:7)—consequently having divided hoofs and chewing the cud; that it was an animal of great size and strength, but too wild to plough or harrow (Job 39:9–12). In two places also it is used as a poetic parallel to a bullock or calf: “His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of an unicorn” (Deuteronomy 33:17); “He maketh them also to skip like a calf, Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn” (Psalm 29:6).

These facts seem entirely to justify the unanimous conclusion of modern Bible scholars that the animal belonged to the ox family, and probably to that branch of it which was formerly common in northern Europe under the name of Auerochs, or yore ox (ancient ox), abbreviated by the Romans to Urus; which is said still to exist in the Caucasus mountains; whose form is sculptured upon the monuments of Nimroud as a wild animal of the chase; whose bones, six and a half feet in height and twelve in length, with bony horn cores more than three feet long, are found in Switzerland; and whose teeth Tristram asserts that he found in Palestine.