Helel ben Shahar: How Did Isaiah's Morning Star Become Lucifer?
The 'shining one, son of the dawn,' who tried to raise his throne above the stars and was thrown down to the pit.
The name Lucifer appears in Isaiah 14:12 in the King James Version. The Hebrew is Helel ben Shahar, "shining one, son of Dawn," and the Latin Vulgate rendered it lucifer, an ordinary word for the morning star.
Isaiah 14 is a taunt song against the king of Babylon. In the middle it suddenly shifts to cosmic language: "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! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north."
The Hebrew name is Helel ben Shahar, "shining one, son of Dawn." The morning star, the planet Venus, rises bright before sunrise and then vanishes in the sun's glare, a natural image of arrogance cut short. Shahar was a Canaanite god of dawn, and the "mount of the congregation" in the north recalls the mountain where the Canaanite gods held council. Many scholars think Isaiah is reusing an older myth about a lesser god who tried to take the high throne and fell.
The Latin Vulgate translated Helel as lucifer, "light-bringer," an ordinary Latin word for the morning star. Early Christian writers such as Origen and Tertullian read the passage alongside Luke 10:18, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven," and Lucifer became a name for the devil. The passage has everything later legends needed: a being of light, ambition, the stars of God, a divine assembly, and a fall.
The name Lucifer comes from a Latin word for the planet Venus as the morning star, and the same Latin word is applied to Christ in the ancient Easter hymn called the Exsultet.
In context the poem mocks a human king of Babylon; its identification with Satan comes from later Christian interpretation, not from Isaiah.
