Jeremiah 51

Jeremiah 51:40

:7 ”And unicorns shall come down with them, and bullocks with bulls. And their land shall be soaked (or drenched) with blood, and their dust with fat shall be fattened.” The unicorn has been commonly regarded as fabulous in modern times; but of late some traces of it have been found in Tibet and other parts of Asia. But even supposing it to be a real animal, we have no reason to believe that it was ever common in the Holy Land, as the one here named would seem to have been from the frequency with which it is mentioned. The modern writers are divided between a certain species of gazelle or antelope and the wild buffalo of Palestine and Egypt. The name may here be used either as a poetical description of the ox, or to suggest that wild as well as tame beasts should be included in the threatened slaughter. Dust here denotes dry soil, which is said to be enriched by the bodies of the slain.

So Virgil says that Roman blood had twice enriched the soil of Macedonia, and similar statements have been made with respect to the field of Waterloo. To ‘come down’ in the first clause is by some explained as meaning to come down to the slaughter (Jeremiah 50:27; Jeremiah 51:40), by others to fall or sink under the fatal stroke (Zechariah 11:2).