The Re’em is the mighty wild ox of Hebrew tradition — a colossal, untamable horned beast whose strength became proverbial in scripture and whose size, in rabbinic legend, swelled to mountainous proportions. Half real animal and half legend, the Re’em stands for raw, God-given power beyond any human ability to harness.
The Untamable Strength
The Re’em appears throughout the Hebrew scriptures as an emblem of unconquerable might. “God brought him out of Egypt; he has strength like a wild ox,” says the Book of Numbers; and Job asks, “Will the wild ox consent to serve you? Will he spend the night at your manger? Can you bind him in the furrow with ropes?” — the answer being a resounding no. The Re’em cannot be domesticated, cannot be yoked, cannot be bent to the plow; it is the very symbol of a power that belongs to the wild and to God alone. The Psalms exalt the horns of the righteous as “the horns of the Re’em.”
The Beast of Mountainous Size
In the legends of the sages, the Re’em grew to staggering dimensions. It was said to be so enormous that it could not fit into Noah’s Ark; instead, the Re’em was tethered to the outside of the Ark and swam alongside through the Flood, or only its nostrils were taken aboard, or its young. One tale tells of a Re’em so vast that a day’s journey was needed to cross between its horns, and of King David, in his youth, mistaking a sleeping Re’em for a mountain and climbing upon it, only for the beast to rise and bear him to the heavens.
Wonder of Creation
The Re’em belongs to that company of marvelous creatures — alongside [leviathan], [behemoth], and [ziz] — through which Hebrew tradition contemplated the grandeur and otherness of God’s creation. Whether understood as the great aurochs, the wild ox now extinct, or as a purely legendary giant, the Re’em embodies a single enduring idea: that there are powers in the world made by God that no human hand will ever tame. In its horns and its untamed strength, Hebrew thought found an image of the wild majesty woven into creation itself.