There are two animals, named frequently in scripture, without naturalists being agreed what they are. The one is the behemoth, the other the reem, both mentioned as the types of strength, courage, and independence on man, and as such exempted from the ordinary lot of beasts, to be subdued by him, or reduced under his dominion. Tho’ this is not to be taken in a literal sense, for there is no animal without the fear or beyond the reach of the power of man, we are to understand this as applicable to animals possessed of strength and size so superlative as that in these qualities other beasts bear no proportion to them.
The behemoth, then, I take to be the elephant; his history is well known, and my only business is with the reem, which I suppose to be the rhinoceros. The derivation of this word, both in the Hebrew and the Ethiopic, seems to be from erectness, or standing straight. This is certainly no particular quality in the animal itself, who is not more, or even so much erect as many other quadrupeds, for, in its knees it is rather crooked; but it is from the circumstance and manner in which his horn is placed. The horns of all other animals are inclined to some degree of parallelizm, with his nose, or _os frontis_. The horn of the rhinoceros alone is erect and perpendicular to this bone, on which it stands at right angles, thereby possessing a greater purchase, or power, as a lever, than any horn could possibly have in any other position.
This situation of the horn is very happily alluded to in the sacred writings: “My horn shalt thou _exalt_ like the horn of an unicorn[31]:” and the horn here alluded to is not wholly figurative, as I have already taken notice of in the course of my history[32], but was really an ornament, worn by great men in the days of victory, preferment, or rejoicing, when they were anointed with new, sweet, or fresh oil, a circumstance which David joins with that of erecting the horn.
Some authors, for what reason I know not, have made the reem, or unicorn, to be of the deer or antelope kind, that is, of a genus whose very character is fear and weakness, very opposite to the qualities by which the reem is described in scripture; besides, it is plain the reem is not of the class of clean quadrupeds; and a late modern traveller, very whimsically, takes him for the leviathan, which certainly was a fish. It is impossible to determine which is the silliest opinion of the two. Balaam, a priest of Midian, and so in the neighbourhood of the haunts of the rhinoceros, and intimately connected with Ethiopia, for they themselves were shepherds of that country, in a transport, from contemplating the strength of Israel whom he was brought to curse, says, they had as it were the strength of the reem[33]. Job[34] makes frequent allusion to his great strength, and ferocity, and indocility. He asks, Will the reem be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? that is, Will he willingly come into thy stable, and eat at thy manger? And again, Canst thou bind the reem with a band in the furrow, and will he harrow the vallies after thee[35]? In other words, Canst thou make him go in the plow or harrows?