The prophet Isaiah minces no words about the severity of slaying an ox by saying, “He that butchered an ox” is as if “he slew a man” (66:3); I unpack this loaded statement in my new book “Taming the Beast: Human-Animal Encounters in the Bible” (Wipf and Stock Publishers). Namely, Isaiah sounds a warning that the slaughtering of an ox, even as a personal sacrificial offering (albeit when done merely as pro forma with no personal contrition of guilt for wrongdoing, per Malbim), is tantamount to or would lead to the murder of a human being. The few biblical references to the slaughtering of an ox may likely attest to such killings because they were noteworthy, and not a casual matter or an afterthought.

One notorious case where dispatching an ox leads in short order to the mass slaying of people is evident in the gory saga that takes place on Mt. Carmel, where Elijah the........

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