Tradition: Israeli Mythology
Alternative names: Reëm, Re’em (רְאֵם), Rəʾēm
Category: Cow
The Myth
The re’em is an animal mentioned nine times in the Hebrew Bible. Its exact identity has been debated for centuries, and different traditions and translations have understood it in several different ways.
The creature has been translated as a “unicorn” in the Latin Vulgate and the King James Version. Other translations have rendered the name as “oryx,” “wild ox,” “wild bull,” “buffalo,” or “rhinoceros.” In Modern Hebrew, the word has been associated with the oryx.
One of the best-known descriptions appears in the Book of Job, where God challenges Job by asking whether the re’em can be made to serve mankind:
“Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow?”
The passage emphasizes the creature’s great strength and its independence from human control. Job is asked whether he can trust the re’em’s strength or make it perform agricultural labor and bring in his harvest.
Because of these descriptions, the re’em has often been imagined as a powerful wild bovine rather than an ordinary domesticated ox. Some modern interpretations identify it with the aurochs, the enormous wild ancestor of domestic cattle. Others have associated it with the oryx or other large horned animals.
The famous image of the re’em as a unicorn therefore comes largely from later translation traditions rather than from a detailed biblical description of a one-horned monster. The original Hebrew term itself does not definitively establish what animal was intended.
Sources
“Re’em.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Accessed August 29, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re%27em