“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning? How art thou fallen to the earth, that didst wound the nations?” Isaias 14:12
The Surface Meaning
On the surface level, Isaiah 14 is literally about the downfall of the king of Babylon (it says so in 14:4). the minute we hear “Babylon” we tend to zone out and spiritualize things, because, true to His word, God basically wiped out the Babylonians thousands of years ago.
But in Isaiah’s time, the Babylonians were the up and comers. They were the new kid in town, and they were poised to do some extraordinary things in the world, one of which was to conquer and destroy Jerusalem.
So in a literal sense, Babylon was a real army, and had a real king. And Isaiahs prophecy was foretelling the downfall of their king in the future. So then we get to verse 12 “how art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer”… This is a perfect example of how word meanings change over time.
A Creative Translation Choice
While the original Hebrew word used in this verse is heilel (loosely meaning ‘shining one,’) from the earliest of times, the word has usually been translated into other languages as some variation of Lucifer. The Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Old Testament, uses the word Εωσφόρος, transliterated as Eosphorus, which corresponds to Lucifer. This same word was translated in the Latin Vulgate (ca. 400) as lucifer. Later, Wycliffe’s Middle English Bible translation (1382), as well as nearly all Early Modern English Bibles—e.g., Coverdale (1535), Geneva (1560), Douay-Rheims (1610), and King James (1611)—all use “Lucifer.”
But just what does this mysterious name mean?
Venus: the Morning Star
Lucifer is actually a commonly used name for Venus. After the sun and moon, Venus is (seasonally) the third brightest object in the sky and can shine quite brightly. However, unlike stars which can be visible high in the night sky, Venus is within our solar system, so from the Earth’s perspective, its orbit tends to closely coincide with the sun. As a result, the majority of Venus’ orbit occurs during the daytime alongside the sun, so it’s typically only visible for a short period of time just before sunset or just before sunrise.
Since antiquity, Venus was a well known and even revered celestial object. This is in sharp contrast to today’s culture, where “light pollution” has grayed our night skies, and we’re generally quite disconnected from the stars. For example, do you know what phase the moon is in right now? Since Hebrews (along with other ancient cultures) used a lunar calendar based on the phases of the moon, they would generally be more aware of celestial objects.
So here we have this star-like object (which we know today is actually the planet Venus) which would shine brightly—but would only appear for a short time before sunrise and just after sunset. For this reason, Venus is also known as the ‘morning star.’ Actually, for a time, Venus was sometimes thought to be two distinct ‘stars’ since there seemed to be a two aspects, one of the morning, and another of the evening. And the term Lucifer specifically refers to the morning aspect of Venus. (Ironically, John Wycliffe, perhaps the first person to translate the term Lucifer into a complete English language Bible, has been called the “morning star of the Reformation” for his early dissenting views within the Catholic Church.)
A Sarcastic Taunt
So my very loose paraphrase of Isaiah 14:12 is this: “king of Babylon, you were quite a mighty ruler in your day, like a shining star in the nighttime sky, but now you’ve fallen back down to earth.”
The Spiritual Meaning
The dual meaning in this chapter has also been applied (and I think rightly so) to Satan’s downfall as well. “I beheld Satan fall from heaven.”
A Long Accepted Interpretation
The “I wills” of the devil are very helpful in understanding spiritual warfare. But it’s important to remember that this is only the secondary, spiritualized interpretation. And while it is generally, accpeted, it is not unviersal. Adam Clarke comments thus “That the Holy Spirit by his prophets should call this arch-enemy of God and man the light-bringer, would be strange indeed. But the truth is, the text speaks nothing at all concerning Satan nor his fall, nor the occasion of that fall, which many divines have with great confidence deduced from this text. O how necessary it is to understand the literal meaning of Scripture, that preposterous comments may be prevented!”
Shifting Cultural Meaning
But using the older name “Lucifer” is, I would argue, a bad idea today, because it is now synonymous with Satan. The best translation for this passage is “morning star,” and that’s exactly how other references are translated in the NT—where it refers to Jesus.
Some Christians Struggle with Accepting Metaphors
Venus is a metaphor. I think people’s big hangup has been with the Bible using a metaphor for both Jesus and Satan, but the Bible does this sort of thing all the time. Who is a lion? The devil is a roaring lion. But Jesus is also the Lion of Judah. The devil is even called “the god of this world” in 2 Cor 4:4. Sin is likened to leaven, but Jesus also shares a parable of how the kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a baker mixes into the dough until it is fully leavened. And we are supposed to be as wise as serpents….
Sometimes Secondary Meanings Eclipse the Original Intention
Another example of this is when Isaiah prophesies that “a virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and you’ll call his name Emmanuel, God with us.”
This has a very direct and immediate fulfillment in the context of Isaiah’s time, but we know from the New Testament that this prophecy has an even deeper meaning about Jesus.