Every so often, someone discovers the word “unicorn” in an old English Bible and instantly assumes Scripture is a Narnia prequel. Or that they got a fanfic Bible or something. And honestly, I get it. The mental image of a lone unicorn trotting through the wilderness in the book of Numbers is worth contemplating for a few moments at least.
And then the “wait, what?!?” hits.
Unicorn: The Word Itself
It’s easy to think that the Old Testament writers were just making stuff up, or had a poor grasp of reality, but the real story is actually far more interesting.
If you find the word “unicorn” in the Bible, you’re probably reading The King James Version, which uses the word nine times. Nearly all the English translations of the Bible in the 1500s and 1600s did this, but the King James Version is the most common translation still used today with the word “unicorn.” Sparkly as the word may be in your mind’s eye, the Hebrew word that gets translated to unicorn, re’em, definitely does not.
The re’em was likely a massive, wild, bull-like creature, impossible to tame or nearly so, and may have been a now extinct species like an auroch. Those are basically to bulls what mammoths are to elephants. Think “prehistoric rhinoceros energy,” not “fairytale companion.”
The Greek Septuagint (an authoritative Greek translation of the Old Testament) rendered re’em as monokeros—“one-horned.” Medieval translators took that literally, and now we have unicorns on the scene. The mythological creature is a translation artifact, not biblical theology.
Lol, the end, right? Wrong.
The odd or unexpected language we find in the Bible is actually very important. It reminds us that ancient languages don’t map neatly onto modern categories. Words drift. Images shift. Cultures interpret differently. And sometimes linguistic shifts leave behind delightful linguistic fossils: unicorns, satyrs, dragons—all translation moments where the English language leans a little medieval (one of the values and the reasons that Latin and Greek are still in use by scholars is that they’re dead languages. They don’t undergo the shifts and changes that live languages do).
But the bigger point is this: the Bible wasn’t written in English, and reading it well means occasionally chasing down a word or two to better understand the author’s intent or the proper nuance of the passage. Let’s look at non-scriptural example:
| Terrible vs Horrible – synonyms | |
| Horrible = bad 😨 | Terrible = bad 😨 |
| Horrifying = bad 😨 | Terrifying = bad 😨 |
| Horrific = bad 😨 | Terrific = great! 🤔 |
This is an example where we think we know a word, but how an original author used it is very different from our understanding of the word today (this is an example of semantic reversal, if you care to know the technical term). This is all English over just a few hundred years! You can see how things might get dicey if you’re not only trying to work across a great deal of time, but across languages too. So digging into a word here or there can reward you with clarity and a much richer understanding of the world the text emerged from.
More modern translations such as the New American Bible or the New Revised Standard Version have generally paid more attention to these shifts rather than focusing on a literal word for word translation for this very goal of clarity of meaning. Older translations often focused on linguistic accuracy, and newer ones are generally more focused on translating the meaning (semantics). This is one of the reasons that different translations are, well, different. The goal of any given translation may not be quite what the goal of another is, and so they end up a little different even though they may both be based on the exact same original text (if you want a quite direct example of this, just for fun, you can find a GenZ bible translation here).
Some other fun moments in Scripture
If the unicorn surprised you, there are 3 other unexpected moments in Scripture for your enjoyment. They’re not all translation issues, but they can evoke the sense of wonder (and/or confusion) that finding unicorns in the Bible does.
A Floating Axe Head (2 Kings 6)
A group of apprentices is chopping wood by the Jordan when someone loses their borrowed iron axe head in the river. This is bad news in an age when iron is expensive and borrowing is taken seriously. Who hasn’t borrowed something and then lost or broken it? Bad vibes, only funny later. Sometimes, much later.
No worries for the woodsmen, though. Elisha tosses a stick in the river, and the iron floats to the top. Crisis averted, tool returned, reputation saved.
A Talking Donkey (Numbers 22)
Balaam is on his way somewhere he shouldn’t be, and his donkey sees an angel blocking the road. After three evasive maneuvers and one very frustrated prophet, God lets the donkey speak. The donkey shows more spiritual awareness than its rider, which is… uncomfortably relatable.
Elisha and the she-bears (2 Kings 2)
A group of unruly youths mocks Elisha—“Go up, baldy!”—and two bears come barreling out of the woods and maul the youths.
There’s a whole historical-cultural conversation about this passage, and some translation fun about just how old the “youths” really are (tldr, very well could be brigands rather than children), and the surprise factor alone earns it a place in the biblical oddities hall of fame.
Ok, I threw these in mostly for some fun, but these stories aren’t included in Scripture for shock value. They’re part of a world and literary tradition where the line between the ordinary and the divine is thin, and it’s good to find ways to articulate and share that.
These stories give us a few good reminders that everyone reading Scripture should keep in mind:
- The biblical writers didn’t sanitize their experiences.
- They didn’t flatten the world into something comfortable or tame.
- There’s interpretation involved, as with any account of literally anything, and we have a God who acts in history in ways that are sometimes dramatic, sometimes subtle, and sometimes just bewildering.
All of it has meaning. The unicorns reveal a world that, in some ways, was strange to ours, and that we need to pay attention to. The floating axe head tells us God cares about everyday things—even borrowed tools. The talking donkey shows God can use humor and interruption to correct our course. The bears reveal that prophets weren’t ornamental; God took their mission seriously. There’s something in every moment of Scripture, even the odd passages.
So yes, the King James Bible mentions “unicorns,” but that’s a quirk of language, not theology. What matters is the instinct behind the question: curiosity. The willingness to ask, “Wait, what’s going on here?” That curiosity is where Scripture opens up.
Once we’ve chased down one unicorn, we start noticing other oddities we’ve never slowed down long enough to enjoy. We begin to see the layers—the humor, the humanity, the mystery, the ancient world with its dangers and wonders. And we realize that the Bible is not a dull book at all. It’s vibrant. Strange. Honest. Full of divine surprises. So open it up, and I challenge you dear reader, if you’re tempted to say “I know this story,” pay extra attention, find a detail that’s never caught your attention before, and see what God is saying to you in it.
Image: Photo by Paul Bill on Unsplash
