a fattened animal: a beast of the herd fed up on grain for slaughter, the prize animal kept back for a feast or an offering
Most cattle in ancient Israel grazed and worked for a living. This word names the exception: an animal taken out of that ordinary life, penned, and fed up on grain until it grew heavy with meat and fat. Feeding an animal food that people could have eaten made it costly, and that was the point. A fattened beast was a household's showpiece, the animal you killed when the occasion was worth the loss.
So the word keeps turning up where somebody is making a statement:
- David sacrifices an ox and a fattened animal as the ark of the covenant is carried up to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:13).
- Adonijah slaughters sheep, cattle, and fattened animals at the banquet where he tries to make himself king (1 Kings 1:9).
- Israel heaps the fat of fattened animals on the altar while ignoring justice, and God says he has had enough of it (Isaiah 1:11, Amos 5:22).
That is also why the picture can turn frightening. In Ezekiel 39:18 the warriors and princes of a beaten army are listed as rams, lambs, goats, bulls, and fattened beasts of Bashan, and the birds and wild animals are called to the meal. The strongest men on the field have become the prize livestock, and they are what is being served. Only in Isaiah 11:6 does the fattened animal simply stand in the open beside a calf and a young lion, with a child leading them and nothing hunting it.
Hebrew has close neighbors for this word: the plain head of cattle (שׁוֹר) it is so often paired with, and the fat itself (חֵלֶב) that made such an animal worth so much at the altar. This word names neither the species nor the substance. It names the animal by how it was raised.