Catchy title, right? Most of the topics that I’ve discussed here are more substantial and significant than any conversation about Lucifer.  The reason I decided to write about him is because the truth of Lucifer is so stunning, you won’t believe it could have been hidden from you for your entire life.

To most of us, “Lucifer” is a familiar name for the devil or Satan.  Nowadays, it has become a romanticized character from a popular TV show in the U.S. where Lucifer is a drop-dead hunk that women swoon over.  Funny thing–that’s probably a more accurate depiction of him than some red personage with wings on his back, horns on his head and a pointy tail.  No, according to the Apostle Paul, Satan may appear downright beautiful!

2 Cor. 11:14–“And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.”

This is a far cry from the conventional rendering of Lucifer (a.k.a. Satan) as something evil or sinister.  But, the reason I said there is a secret about him is because…there is no such person called Lucifer ever mentioned in scripture.

If the Bible makes no mention of anyone named Lucifer, how in the world did that name become synonymous with Satan, whose name DOES appear throughout the Bible?  Why has that name become just another name for the devil?

As I’ve explained throughout this blog, I dig deep into the original language of the Bible so that I can gain a more accurate understanding of the author’s meaning and intent.  And, if you do a quick Concordance search, you’ll discover that “ah-HA!”, I’m WRONG!  The name Lucifer DOES appear in the Bible!  I found it right HERE:

Isa. 14:12–“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!“

See?  It’s right there, in print!  It clearly says “Lucifer, son of the morning….”  So, why do I allege that his name does NOT appear in the Bible?  Consider this–throughout history, there have been various translations of scripture and it was these multiple translations that eventually brought us today’s modern Bible, most commonly referred to as the King James Version of the Bible.  The above verse from Isaiah is cited from the KJV.

Let’s take a trip back in the wayback machine (hat tip to Peabody and Sherman to those of my generation) and see how the various translations read.

Originally, this verse in Isaiah was written in Hebrew, as virtually all of the Old Testament was in Hebrew.  When you read this verse in its Hebrew equivalent, you’ll see that there is no mention of anyone named Lucifer at all.  In fact, this verse does not even contain any proper nouns.

In Hebrew: איך האמנות נפלת מהשמיים, הו לוציפר, בן הבוקר!איך אמנות אתה חותך אל הקרקע, אשר לא להחליש את האומות

Here is the rendering, in English, as a nearly-perfect transliteration found in the Concordant Literal Bible:

Concordant Literal Bible

Isa. 14:12–“How have you fallen from the heavens!  Howl, son of the dawn!  You have been hacked down to the earth, Defeater over all nations!”

Isn’t that strange?  When the Hebrew verse is read directly in the English language, the only reference to any person is as “son of the dawn”.  Could this be another expression for Lucifer or Satan?  The answer is clear if we simply read the entirety of Isa. 14.  Doing so, we discover that this chapter is about the nation of Israel returning back to their ancestral homeland and the defeat of the king of Babylon, not Satan.  You’ll see the theme as you read these verses.

V. 1–“For Yahweh will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob.”  Since Israel DID return to their own land on May 14, 1948, this particular verse is no longer prophecy; it is history.  The house of Jacob [the Temple] is still to come.

V. 4–“That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!“  Ancient Babylon is a description of Israel’s Middle East neighbors who still despise her existence.  This hatred will soon cease, as prophesied here.

V. 11–“Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.“  This verse can only be describing a human being.  Satan, or “Lucifer” is a spirit being, therefore cannot ever go “down to the grave”.

V. 24–“Yahweh of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand:  ²⁵ That I will break the ASSYRIAN in my land, and upon my mountains tread him under foot: then shall his yoke depart from off them, and his burden depart from off their shoulders.”  Again, this entire chapter is a description of Israel’s triumph over Babylon, where the king of Assyria is located.  Isaiah did not insert a random thought about “Lucifer” in the midst of this chapter.

So, if the Hebrew to English Concordant Literal Translation makes no mention of Lucifer, how did his name get in there?  Did any other translation also omit his name?  Yes, it’s called the Septuagint Translation, often referred to as “The Seventy” or LXX because seventy Jewish scholars had begun translating the original Hebrew into Greek as early as the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C.E.

Septuagint LXX

Isa. 14:12–“πῶς ἐξέπεσεν ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ὁ ἑωσφόρος ὁ πρωΐ ἀνατέλλων; συνετρίβη εἰς τὴν γῆν ὁ ἀποστέλλων πρὸς πάντα τὰ ἔθνη”

English equivalent:  “How did the wretch of the early reigns fall from the blame? she has crashed into the world of the far-off always in the world”

Once again, we read this verse in the EARLIEST and most accurate translation of the Hebrew Bible and there is no mention of Lucifer.  How did it become a part of our modern Bibles?  That answer is found in the works of Jerome in 382 A.D. when he was commissioned by Pope Damasus to translate the Bible into Latin, called the Latin Vulgate.  When he did, here is how he transliterated this verse:

Latin Vulgate

Isa. 14:12–“quomodo cecidisti de caelo lucifer qui mane oriebaris corruisti in terram qui vulnerabas gentes”

English equivalent: “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?”  And thus, we have today’s KJV Bible, introducing the name Lucifer to an unsuspecting world.

Is this a bad thing?  Does the Latin Vulgate improperly translate this verse?  No–Jerome wrote “lucifer”, the Latin word for “daystar”, “son of dawn”, or “light bearer” (an obvious reference to the east, where the sun comes up in the morning).  In no way did Jerome describe a spirit being.  He described a heavenly body, and this was correctly understood for over a millennium.

It wasn’t until the King James Version of the Bible was introduced in the 1600’s that the translators interpreted this word “lucifer” to be a proper name.  If they had been consistent in translating the Latin language into English, they would have simply written “daystar”.  But they had already concluded that Jerome’s translation was about Satan by citing the very first verse in this post, 2 Cor. 11:14, where Satan is called an angel of light, as evidence of Jerome’s appropriate rendering of the “son of dawn” and “angel of light” as meaning the same thing.

They don’t.  One is a clear reference to Satan himself.  The other is a clear reference to the king of Babylon.  This is entirely different than the spirit being called Satan, or here, Lucifer.  Reading all of Isaiah 14 in context, we see that it makes no sense to suddenly write about Satan or “Lucifer” in the midst of a narrative solely about Israel and Babylon.

Even though the King James translators did their best to convert the Latin text to English, their human reasoning and incorrect assumptions prevented them from writing the correct word “daystar” in replacement of “lucifer”.  In the 1600’s, it was widely accepted that this verse in Isaiah was a reference to Satan, so they simply chose to leave intact the Latin word that was “another name for him” in order for it to comport with this accepted belief.

One other important point to note is the fact that the word Lucifer appears only one time in all of the Bible, here in this verse in Isaiah.  If Lucifer were indeed just another name for the “Adversary” [Heb.: השטן, “shtn”] or Satan, why would that name have only been written once?  It’s not rare for a specific word to only appear once in scripture, in fact there are 3,949 words in the Bible that make their grand entrance only once, never to be seen again.  But it is indeed rare for such an important character, whose mission it is to destroy Yahweh’s promise of bringing all of humanity into his heavenly family, to only be mentioned one time.  If another name for Satan was Lucifer, that expression would have been used almost as frequently as Satan throughout the Old Testament.

So, go ahead and watch your hunk on TV called Lucifer.  He could just as easily be called Steve.  It would have just as little connection with Satan.

I know.  Mind blown.  Again.