qeren

The picture behind this word is plain and physical: the hard, pointed horn on an animal's head. In the night vision of Daniel 7 the fourth beast has ten of them. They are counted, watched, and then one more pushes its way up among them and shoves three of them out of the way.

A horn is an animal's weapon and the visible sign of its strength, which made it a natural picture for a ruler. Daniel's vision leaves nothing to guess at: the explanation given to the visionary says outright that the ten horns are ten kings and that another king rises after them. From there the horn in the chapter behaves like a person. It has eyes and a boasting mouth, it speaks great things, and it makes war on God's holy ones and wins for a while.

Because the chapter says what the horns stand for, a reader is not left to invent the symbolism. What Daniel does not say is which kings and which kingdoms are meant, and centuries of argument have been about that question rather than about the word.

The Hebrew word for horn (קֶרֶן) reaches much further, naming the corners of the altar, a flask of anointing oil, a hilltop, and beams of light. In the Aramaic of the Bible this word stays close to home: horns on a beast, kings, and the horn blown as an instrument.

Three times in the story of the golden statue a royal command names the same short list of instruments, and this word comes first: the horn, then pipe, lyre, harp, and the rest. Its job in the story is to be heard by everyone at once. When the music sounds, the whole assembly is to fall down and worship, so the horn is the signal that turns a crowd into worshipers.

This is the ordinary word for an animal's horn doing double duty, because the instrument was made from one: a curved horn blown at the wide end, the same sort of instrument Israel used to call an assembly or raise an alarm. Most English Bibles say "horn" here. Older ones say "cornet," which misleads, since a cornet is a valved brass instrument of the last two centuries.

Scholars still argue over some members of this list, especially the one often rendered "bagpipe" and how many of the names came into Aramaic from Greek. The horn is not one of the doubtful ones.