Sunday, May 08, 2016
The parallels between the
astronomical picture and what happened in the spirit realm are striking and
reinforce the points Isaiah makes here in describing this tragic angelic
rebellion.
In Isaiah 14:12, the powerful being
who led a rebellion against God is referred to by a word often translated as
“Lucifer”. The original Hebrew designation here—used only this one time in the
Bible—is Heylel. Its precise meaning
is debated. Some think it means “Praise of God”, seeing a relation with the
Hebrew Halal (“praise”), the el at the end perhaps being a suffix
meaning “God” (as in the angelic names Michael and Gabriel).
Others contend that Heylel means “brightness” or “shining
one”—particularly given its apparent astronomical association. Paired here with
the phrase “son of the morning”, many believe the reference is to the planet
Venus as the bright morning star shining in the east before sunrise. Indeed,
this was evidently the understanding of the term shortly before Christ’s time.
The ancient Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament rendered the word
as Eosphoros (“dawn bearer”), the
Greek term for Venus as the morning star (also known in Greek as Phosphoros, meaning “light bearer”).
This meaning was incorporated into
the fifth-century Latin Vulgate translation with the word Lucifer (“light
bearer” or “light bringer”), the name Roman astronomers used for the same
morning star. Yet we should further consider that the angels of God were referred
to figuratively in Scripture as “morning stars” (Job 38:7; see also Revelation
1:20).
A little knowledge of astronomy
helps us better understand the picture here. Venus is the brightest object in
the sky except for the sun and moon. We now understand it to be a planet. But
to the ancients it was classed as a star—simply because their words for star
meant a small, shining point of light in the sky. Notice again that the
reference in Isaiah 14:12 is “son of the morning”. The planet Venus is still
referred to as either the morning star or the evening star—because it is
visible only just before sunrise or just after sunset.
Thus the picture presented is of a
grand star, likened to Venus, that wants to be grander than the other stars: “I
will exalt my throne above the stars of God” (Isaiah 14:13). Before dawn, Venus
rises from the eastern horizon. But before it is able to climb into the sky—to
rise above the other stars and be the highest—the light of the rising sun
causes Venus to disappear in the growing light of day.
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