King James’ Bible and the Unicorn


 King James Bible and the Unicorn

A Tidbit from our Tour of Stirling Castle


The unicorn is Scotland’s official national animal.  During our Scotland visit we had been seeing it in the iconography all over the churches, buildings and monuments.  Stirling Castle had unicorns all over it as well.  The Queen’s Inner Hall even had the Passion Narrative expressed through pictures on each wall….with a Unicorn in each painting as Jesus


As we continued to hear the history of James the IV, V and VI, the last of which was the one who commissioned the King James Bible something clicked for me.  I was aware that the King James Bible idiosyncratically uses ‘unicorn’ in a number of places for the Hebrew word ‘reym’ (normally ‘ox’).   One example is Psalm 92:10, “But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil.”  Another is Numbers 23:22, “God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn.”


I asked one of the tour guides if the importance of the unicorn in Scotland was the reason why ‘unicorn’ uniquely shows up in the King James Bible.  They responded “Yes, the word ‘unicorn’ appears nine times in the King James Bible.  The quick, knowledgeable response confirmed for me that ‘unicorn’ was written with purpose.  This provided me a new lens with which to read the KJV - or a glimpse of how the Bible was being read in Scotland.


Wikipedia’s article on the KJV refers to the use of unicorn as a mis-translation.  In a technical sense that may be true, but it was done with a purpose.


Photo 1:  The Queen’s Inner Chamber

Photo 2:  The King’s Chamber’s ceiling

Photo 3:  The King’s Chamber’s wall







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