A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 14: Lucifer, Son of the Morning

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 14: Lucifer, Son of the Morning

The Roman Catholic images of a fallen angel named Lucifer have permeated Christian society for at least fifteen hundred years, but they are related far more closely to the allegorical images which are found in ancient Mesopotamian carvings than they are to the truths of Scripture. The epithet Lucifer, which is known only from Isaiah chapter 14, does not actually exist in the original language of Scripture, and the words from which the epithets were formed were used in reference to a man, and not as an address for some mystical and supernatural demon or fallen angel. They were used to describe a certain and then-future king of Babylon, whom we would assert could represent any king of any world empire at any given time, a man standing in opposition to God, and not some other-worldly adversary with super-human powers.

The Roman Catholic visions of Lucifer actually detach the Biblical warnings from the realities of everyday life, and the context here in Isaiah concerns the punishment of the children of Israel for their sins. Lucifer does indeed exist, and has existed throughout all of history, but as a man, or as a long series of men, the nature of which the Roman Catholic fables have forever prevented Christians from understanding. The true meaning of the words requires an understanding of ancient history as well as the Biblical context which is found here in the surrounding text of Isaiah. Having obfuscated the meaning of the term Lucifer, the popes of the Roman Catholic Church have actually quite often fulfilled the role of Lucifer, through which they have pretended to be the light-bearers for Christian society while they have actually stood in opposition to Christ. But the people never noticed, because they saw Lucifer as some far-off and mystical, ethereal demon.

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Discussing recent chapters in Isaiah, we have seen that the prophet first forewarned of the destruction of Assyria in Isaiah chapter 10, and then in Isaiah chapter 13, the prophet began to prophecy the fall of Babylon at the hands of the Medes, which is continued in this chapter. In the course of that prophecy, it must be noticed that Babylon is also portrayed as an empire, ruling over the nations, at the time that it would fall. So not only had Isaiah prophesied the demise of the empire which had ruled over his own world, that of Assyria, but also the coming rise of a Babylonian empire, and then the rise of the Medes with this prophesied fall of Babylon. So the prophet had certain visions foretelling a portion of the history of three world empires, well over a hundred years before any of the prophesied events had even begun to unfold with the fall of Assyria around 612 BC.

Moreover, these prophecies are interwoven throughout the writings of Isaiah. For example, in Isaiah chapter 21 we read “2… Go up, O Elam: besiege, O Media; all the sighing thereof have I made to cease.” Those nations were also oppressed for centuries under the world empires, but they would prevail and their sighing would cease. Then a little further on we see the objective of their call to arms: “9… And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.” So in that chapter as well as here in Isaiah chapter 13, it is prophesied that the Medes, along with the Persians, would have the principal role in the then-future fall of the Babylonian empire. Later, in Isaiah chapter 39, an exchange between Hezekiah king of Judah and certain envoys of the Babylonians is recorded, and as a result of Hezekiah’s discourse with them, Isaiah had warned him that “7… thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” Of course, Hezekiah was not yet king at this point in Isaiah chapter 13, but he evidently would be king very soon, as the death of his father is recorded in the closing verses of chapter 14.

That prophecy in Isaiah chapter 39 concerning the sons of Hezekiah is also found in another record of the same event, in 2 Kings chapter 20. Throughout several chapters of 2 Kings exchanges between Isaiah and Hezekiah had been recorded, which serve as a witness that this prophet Isaiah had indeed prophesied all of these things which had not yet happened, and he prophesied them over a hundred years before they had begun to happen. Furthermore, the fall of Babylon is prophesied or alluded to again in Isaiah chapters 43 and 48, where in the end of Isaiah chapter 44, running into chapter 45, there is an explicit mention of a king, called Cyrus, who would ensure the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple, and where there is language which implies that he would also be the conqueror of Babylon. He would have to have been the conqueror of Babylon, if he could have been in a position to assure the restoration of Jerusalem.

So over a hundred years before any of these events had even begun to unfold in history, Isaiah foretold of the fall of Assyria, the rise and fall of Babylon as an empire, the rise of the Persian empire and the name of its first king, Cyrus, and of the restoration of Jerusalem which was not completed in the time of Cyrus, but which Cyrus had initiated and made possible. Having done this, Isaiah had also rather subtly described the extent of the destruction of Jerusalem and the first temple, where in other places his prophecies about the destruction of Jerusalem were more general. However the temple would not even be destroyed for another hundred and ten years or so after he wrote those words, at a point later on in his life following the failed Assyrian siege of Jerusalem.

With these visions of Isaiah, and the assurances which we have of the time when they had actually been written, we may know with all confidence that Yahweh God is true, and that He alone is the author of history. There are other amazing elements of the prophecy of Isaiah, but these visions of empires which the prophet had recorded are quite explicit, and the provenance of Yahweh which is found in his words cannot be justly denied, or honestly ignored. Within just a few hundred years of the fall of ancient Babylon, most of the details of Assyrian and Babylonian history were, for the most part, lost to the Greeks of the Hellenistic period. The records of Babylon were short-lived anyway, since that empire endured for not even seventy years, and the records of the Assyrians were left buried in the rubble of its principal cities. So as a result, the famous Greek historians such as Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus could only report myths and legends in place of actual history, one example of which are the tales of Semiramis that are now known to be false. Evidently such tales were repeated, because it was all that they had to offer. However in recent centuries the archaeological discoveries which have been made in both the Levant and Mesopotamia also serve to substantiate the words of the prophets.

As we have said, Isaiah chapter 13 contains a prophecy of the fall of Babylon even before it had become an empire. The chapter ended with a portrayal of a desolate Babylon inhabited only by doleful creatures, owls and satyrs. One thing we should elaborate on is that word, satyr. The word devils is found four times in the Old Testament English of the King James Version of the Bible. On two occasions it was translated from the Hebrew word שד, shed or shad (# 7700), which is defined as a demon. But on two other occasions it was translated from the Hebrew word שעיר or sa’yr (# 8163), a word which was transliterated into Greek as satyr. The word literally means rough, and described both mountainous land and stormy weather, but was also used to describe a goat, and in many contexts it generally came to mean goat. The most ancient Greeks came to represent satyrs as a creature half-man and half-goat, in their literature and their art. Perhaps that may provide further insight into the parable of the sheep and the goats, found in Matthew chapter 25. We may elaborate on this in a similar vision of Idumea, where the same language appears once again, at the end of Isaiah chapter 34.

However even with the dismal view of a fallen Babylon at the end of Isaiah chapter 13, the vision of the fall of Babylon is not complete with the end of that chapter, and here it continues until the end of chapter 14, where Isaiah himself marks its end. So we shall commence with Isaiah chapter 14 and the continuation of this vision of Babylon’s fall, which opens with yet another message of hope for the children of Israel:

1 For the LORD 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.

Yahweh will “yet choose Israel” for which reason Yahshua Christ had told the Canaanite woman who was seeking mercy, in Matthew chapter 15, that “24… I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” While the dogs get the occasional crumbs they find on the floor, Yahshua Christ in the New Testament had fulfilled the Word of Yahweh here in the Old Testament, by coming to announce the gospel of reconciliation to the scattered children of Israel. For that reason, Paul had called his ministry the “ministry of reconciliation” and the gospel the “word of reconciliation”, in 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

The next verse describes the strangers that shall be joined to Israel at this time:

2 And the people shall take them [the strangers], and bring them to their place [but certainly not to Palestine]: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the LORD [which is evidently not in Palestine] for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.

So Israel is prophesied to overcome her captors, who are the “strangers” of verse 1, and they are men of the related Genesis 10 nations, Assyrians, Chaldaeans, Medes and Persians, who had ruled over Israel during this time. Later known by names such as Kimmerians and Scythians, Israel had a recorded historical role in the fall of the Assyrians. However here Isaiah speaks in relation to the Babylonians. As we have also seen earlier in this commentary, many of the children of Israel had also been resettled among the Persians and the Medes, for example where we read in 2 Kings chapter 17: “6 In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.” So it would have been natural for the Israelites remaining in Media to have joined in the struggle against the Babylonians.

In Part 11 of this commentary on Isaiah, titled The Promise in the Flames, we hope to have established the fact that the historical Kimmerians must have had their origins from within the Assyrian empire, and that therefore they also must have been the Bit Khumri of the Assyrian inscriptions, which is the house of Israel whom the Assyrians had resettled in various places in the north after they had taken them into captivity. Then, discussing Isaiah chapter 13 and Isaiah’s Visions of Empires, we have already described the apparent fulfillment of this prophecy in recorded history, where Diodorus Siculus had explained that the later Scythians had relocated many of the people whom they had conquered “to other homes, and two of these became very great colonies: the one was composed of Assyrians and was removed to the land between Paphlagonia and Pontus, and the other was drawn from Media and planted along the Tanais, its people receiving the name Sauromatae.” [1] We would assert that the Scythians had descended from the Israelites of the captivity, whom the Assyrians called Khumri and later Gimiri, while the Persians called them Sakae. In their own writings, the Greeks called them Kimmerians at first, and later Scythians or Sakae, and even later, Galatians and by other, more specific tribal names.

In our 2007 essay Classical Records and German Origins, Part One, one piece of evidence which we had used to demonstrate a connection between Scythians and Kimmerians is a comparison of some of the words of the 5th century BC Greek historian Herodotus which mentioned Scythians with words that had been found on a multi-lingual Persian inscription mentioning the Kimmerians. The inscription, written in Akkadian, Persian and Elamite, belonged to the Persian king Xerxes and mentions “the Amyrgian Cimmerians” and “the Cimmerians (wearing) pointed caps”. A note accompanying the translation of this inscription which appears in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament informs us that in the Persian and Elamite versions of the text these “Cimmerians” are called “Sakans” instead, where we read, in part:

Thus speaks king Xerxes: These are the countries—in addition to Persia—over which I am king under the “shadow” of Ahuramazda, over which I hold sway, which are bringing their tribute to me — whatever is commanded them by me, that they do and they abide by my law(s) —: Media, Elam, Arachosia, Urartu (Pers. version: Armenia), Drangiana, Parthia, (H)aria, Bactria, Sogdia, Chorasmia, Babylonia, Assyria, Sattagydia, Sardis, Egypt (Mi-fir), the Ionians who live on the salty sea and (those) who live beyond (lit: on the other shore of) the salty sea, Маkа, Arabia, Gandara, India, Cappadocia, Da'an, the Amyrgian Cimmerians (Pers. and Elam. versions: Sakans), the Cimmerians (wearing) pointed caps, the Skudra, the Akupish, Libya, Banneshu (Carians) (and) Kush. [2]

As a digression, notice that Xerxes had demanded that all of the nations subject to him must abide by his laws, and this is an aspect of what is found here as Lucifer, which we hope to discuss at length.

Apparently, the Persians themselves did not distinguish the Kimmerians from the Scythians, and in the multi-lingual inscriptions which they left to posterity, it is evident that these peoples were esteemed to have been one and the same. The only difference is the language, where in Akkadian, which was the language of the Assyrians, they were called Kimmerians, but in Persian they were called Sakae. The word Scythian was unique to the Greeks in early writings, but the Greeks also used these other terms to identify the same people.

This king Xerxes, the son of Darius called “the Great”, a successor to Cyrus, had ruled Persia from 486 to 465 BC, and while his father initiated the war against the Greeks which was stalled with the unexpected defeat incurred at the battle of Marathon around 490 BC, Xerxes himself marched into Greece with a much larger army in 480 BC, and was defeated once again and much more severely, in a series of rather decisive battles over a period of about three years. Perhaps forty or fifty years later, the historian Herodotus wrote his Histories, in which the main theme was the war with the Persians. In that work he had presented a list of the nations which had been allied with Persia in Xerxes’ invasion of Greece. Doing so he mentioned the “Amyrgian Scythians” and said that “The Sacae, or Scyths, were clad in trousers, and had on their heads tall stiff caps rising to a point”. Here is the entire passage, where in the 7th book of his Histories, Herodotus listed the armies subject to Persia who had contingents accompanying the invasion of Xerxes into Greece, and these are among the first whom he mentioned after the Persians, Medes, Hyrcanians, Assyrians and Chaldaeans:

64 The Bactrians in the army wore a headgear most like to the Median, carrying their native bows of reed, and short spears. The Sacae, who are Scythians, had on their heads tall caps, erect and stiff and tapering to a point; they wore breeches, and carried their native bows, and daggers, and axes withal, which they call “sagaris.” These were Amyrgian Scythians, but were called Sacae; for that is the Persian name for all Scythians. The commander of the Bactrians and Sacae was Hystaspes, son of Darius and Cyrus' daughter Atossa. [3]

It is without doubt that the Scythians of Herodotus are the Kimmerians and Sakae of the inscriptions of Xerxes, and they are often distinguished from other groups in the same areas, so Scythian is not merely some general regional or cultural term. In our early essay, in response to this we had reproduced a footnote for this passage which George Rawlinson had written for his edition of Herodotus, and he noted that: “According to Hellanicus, the word ‘Amyrgian’ was strictly a geographical title, Amyrgium being the name of the plain in which these Scythians dwelt.” The plain was evidently east of the Caspian Sea. Moreover, the ancient writers were careful to distinguish all of the different nations by name, regardless of how close they were in relationship of geography to one another, such as the Hyrcanians and the Parthians, or Sogdians and Bactrians, so they certainly were not confusing diverse ethnic groups under these few names.

So in both Herodotus and in Persian inscriptions we see a mention of “the Amyrgian Cimmerians” and “the Cimmerians (wearing) pointed caps”, and in Persian the Kimmerians were called Sakae, which are the same people whom the Greeks had called Scythians. So as we had asserted in our series of German origins essays, since the Akkadian language was the lingua franca of the Near East during the earlier Assyrian and Babylonian empires [4], it was supplanted by Aramaic in the time of the Persian empire. Where the Greeks learned of certain tribes migrating westward from Asia in the earlier Akkadian period, they called them after the Assyrian name, Kimmerians. But where they came into contact with different branches of those same peoples in later history, in the Persian period, they called them by the name which the Persians had called them, Sakae, and it is those whom the Greeks had later called Scythians, although all of these names identify the same group of people. Perhaps about a hundred years after Herodotus, in the 4th century BC, Greek writers such as Aristotle had begun to call them by the name Γαλάται, which is Galatians. That name does not appear in literature before that time.

Here it should be apparent, that if Scythians were among the armies of Xerxes in their march to Greece in 480 BC, and if Scythians had been in league with Medes, Persians and Babylonians at the time of the destruction of the cities of the Assyrians in 612 BC, then it is certain that Scythians also had a role in the Persian overthrow of the Babylonians under Cyrus in 539 BC, regardless of whether there is an explicit record which survives to inform us of that fact.

As for the children of Israel bringing their captors “to their place” an possessing them “in the land of the LORD”, none of these references can be to Palestine. This is because the children of both Israel and Judah were already told that their lands would be desolate and without inhabitant in each of Isaiah chapters 5 and 6, something which was also prophesied in many ways in later prophets, for example in Jeremiah chapters 4 and 9. In Jeremiah chapter 4 Israel was told that “7… the destroyer of the [nations] is on his way; he is gone forth from his place to make thy land desolate; and thy cities shall be laid waste, without an inhabitant.” Then in Jeremiah chapter 9 we read “11 And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons; and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.” Even when the relatively small remnant of Judah had returned in the days of Zerubbabel, they certainly did not have any Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian slaves in tow.

So Palestine is not the place of Israel, and the land of Yahweh is not Palestine. Rather, in Deuteronomy chapter 32 we read: “8 When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” Although that passage is debated, because the Dead Sea Scrolls have the last portion to read “children of God” and the Septuagint has “angels of God”, the reading of verse 9 is not in question where it says “9 For the LORD'S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.” Only the children of Israel had been recognized as the children of God throughout the entire Old Testament. Later, in Ezekiel chapter 31, Eden is described as the “garden of God” and the Assyrian as one of the trees of Eden, so all of Eden is the land of Yahweh in that context, and as we explained in our part 2 of our Genesis commentary, Eden encompassed most all of the land which we now know as the Middle and Near East. However in another context, in the 89th Psalm, we read, where Yahweh is being addressed, that “11 The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them.”

In any event, at this point in their history Yahweh is dealing with the children of Israel as He had warned in the case of their disobedience in Deuteronomy chapter 28, where we read: “63 And it shall come to pass, that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it. 64 And the LORD shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone.” But in a more positive manner, this same thing was also prophesied from a different perspective in 2 Samuel chapter 7, where Nathan the prophet had addressed king David in Jerusalem and through him the Word of Yahweh had said, in part: “10 Moreover I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more; neither shall the children of wickedness afflict them any more, as beforetime.” Canaan was never a place of their own. So for both their punishment and for their good, the place of Israel in captivity is certainly a place other than the place which they had formerly occupied, in Palestine.

Therefore, as an assurance that these prophecies are indeed related to the circumstances of Israel which we see here in Isaiah, where Nathan had continued in 2 Samuel chapter 7 we read: “11 And as since the time that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel, and have caused thee to rest from all thine enemies.” Then likewise, the next verse of this chapter of Isaiah echoes that very promise and says:

3 And it shall come to pass in the day that the LORD shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, 4 That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!

Now throughout the balance of this proverb, we must bear in mind that this parable was to be placed into the mouths of the children of Israel at the fall of Babylon, which also seems to be relevant to the far-vision prophecy. In the overall context of Isaiah, the rest described in verse 3 does not come with the fall of ancient Babylon, at a time when Israel still faced many centuries of captivity and punishment, but rather, it is prophesied by Isaiah to come with the appearance of the Root of David, the branch who would bring incredible peace to His people, as it is described in Isaiah chapter 11. For that reason, here we interpret this parable for the king of Babylon to have been intended for any and all of the kings of Mystery Babylon, the series of world empires first described in Daniel as having begun with Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, which would rule over the children of Israel and “wheresoever the children of men dwell”, as it says in an address to Nebuchadnezzar found in Daniel chapter 2.

In verse 4, the Septuagint has “taskmaster” rather than “golden city”, where the Dead Sea Scrolls has the last clause of the verse to read “How the oppressor has ceased! How his assault has ceased!” or in another manuscript, “… how the attacker has ceased!” This is very close to the reading of the Septuagint, because the word which Brenton translated as taskmaster, ἐπισπουδαστής, has a range of possible meanings, since the root word σπουδή is merely haste, speed or effort, among other things, and therefore Liddell & Scott translate ἐπισπουδαστής as one who presses on a work, the actual task being ambiguous in this context. There is no basis in the Hebrew of the Masoretic Text for the reading in the King James Version where it has “golden city”. The New American Standard Bible translates the phrase very well, “And how fury has ceased!”

Now the language used here seems to further support the far-vision interpretation of this parable, although it is certainly also relevant to the historical kings of ancient Babylon:

5 The LORD hath broken the staff of the wicked, and the sceptre of the rulers.

In the fall of Mystery Babylon as it is described in Revelation chapter 18 we read: “3 For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.” Then a little further on in the chapter: “9 And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, 10 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.” Yet in those passages, the repeated reference to Babylon as a city seems to be an allegory for Babylon as a system of world control. Then in chapter 19 we read: “19 And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.”

It is important to note here, that after the fall of Mystery Babylon the kings of the earth are still in their place, just as we see here of the fall of Babylon in later in this chapter of Isaiah, in verse 18.

Continuing the proverb against the king of Babylon:

6 He who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth.

So after his fall, there is another portrayal of a period of rest:

7 The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing. 8 Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up against us.

Here those who had been oppressed by the king of Babylon are described as fir trees and cedars. This evokes the parable of the trees of the forest which is found in Judges chapter 9, where the goodly trees, the olive, the fig and the vine, did not want to leave their natural vocations in order to rule over their fellows. So the bramble, which naturally produces nothing, was chosen as their ruler, and ruled over them as a tyrant, threatening to destroy them if they did not submit to his rule. But once the bramble is removed, the trees are all at peace.

9 Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. 10 All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us?

The kings of the nations would be moved at the sight of the fall of the king of Babylon, who must have seemed even to them to have had supernatural power but who was really just a mortal man like the rest of men. Upon his death, the spirits of the dead in Hades were excited to greet him at his coming, so in spite of having been a great king, he would die and suffer the fate of all other mortal men. None of this describes a supernatural fallen angel, but it does describe a man who mistakenly thought that he was a god, and that was a prevailing attitude among ancient kings.

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.

The word for hell in verse 9 is שאול or sheol (# 7585), which is used to describe both the abode of the spirits of the dead, or simply the grave, as it is here. While the spirit may continue on to be humbled the body will decay and be eaten by worms in the grave. So now there is a poorly understood exclamation, which actually only refers to this mortal king whose body is going to be eaten by worms like all other men:

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!

Of course, the kings of ancient empires had their own kingdoms with which they had begun. After the fall of Assyria in 612 BC, for a few short years there seems to have been a respite. Then in 605 BC Nebuchadnezzar II ascended to the throne of Babylon, and he immediately embarked on campaigns of aggression, seeking to subject to himself all of the nations which had formerly been subject to the Assyrians, a feat which he had accomplished. Subjecting these nations, the empire conscripts their troops in order to use them in its wars against the others, and draws tax revenues from all of them, thereby weakening them all for its own gain.

The word Lucifer is formed from a compound Latin word that means light-bearer. In the Latin Vulgate, Jerome used the term lucifer here, so the King James Version translators seem to have merely copied him. In Latin, lux is light, and fero is a verb which means to bear. The genitive form of lux is lucis, so lucifer means bearer of light. In the Septuagint Greek the word here is ἑωσφόρος, which is a compound Greek word that has precisely the same meaning as lucifer does in Latin. The Latin verb fero seems to have been derived from the Greek verb φέρω, which has the same pronunciation and which bears the same meaning (pun intended).

The Hebrew word translated as lucifer or ἑωσφόρος is הילל or haylal (# 1966), a word which gives us halo and halogen and other related English words. In this form it only appears here in Scripture, although its root word, הלל or halal (# 1984) appears much more often. In Isaiah 13:10 halal was translated as give where we see the phrase “give their light”, and it would better have been rendered as shine. However while halal primarily means to shine, and this word haylal is shining, or here, shining one, halal is also often used in contexts which mean to praise or to boast, where sometimes it is translated in the King James Version as glory. While in the context here haylal is shining, those other elements of its root meaning seem to linger in the background, implying that this king shined in a boastful manner.

The context for the meaning of haylal, as shining one here, is set by the phrase which follows, בן־שׁחר or ben shachar (#’s 1121 and 7837), which is plainly and literally son of the dawn, or morning, which is an epithet for the rising of the sun, or in Roman folklore, the planet Venus which was called the morning star. Likewise, the Greek word ἕως from which the word ἑωσφόρος was formed refers to light, but more specifically to the light of dawn or morning.

For some cultural and historical background explaining why this king of Babylon is called by these epithets, “light-bearer” and “son of the morning”, we are going to cite a book titled Kingship and the Gods – A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature, by Henri Frankfort. This book is cited in a footnote found on page 389 of Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, where there is an Akkadian inscription of Ashurbanipal, one of the last kings of Assyria, in which the word for the sun was also used to describe the king. This inscription is not alone in this regard, but it is a good representation of a phenomenon which is seen in many such ancient inscriptions.

“THE KING AND THE POWERS IN NATURE

“Although the mechanics of magic allowed the Mesopotamian king to exert some pressure, the natural processes remained under the control of the gods; and the king could only attempt to bring about favorable conditions by retaining the divine favor. The indirectness of his influence upon nature is amply illustrated by our quotations. But the sources are likely to be misinterpreted. The literary style of the ancient Near East is often repetitious. It achieves richness and variety by elaborate imagery. But metaphors can be understood only if their frame of reference is fully grasped. Consequently, we must attach a different significance to similar-sounding phrases in Egyptian and in Mesopotamian texts, for they imply a different theological aspect of kingship. If we survey the usual Mesopotamian expressions which seem to suggest that the king had power over nature, we shall find that, with but a very few exceptions, they remain within the bounds of Mesopotamian theology.

“In Mesopotamia, as in Egypt, the ruler is often compared with the sun. Hammurabi stated in the preamble of his law (Code, V, 4-9): "I am the sun of Babylon who causes light to rise over the land of Sumer and Akkad." [Hammurabi was not a Chaldaean, but an Amorite, who lived around the time of the patriarch Isaac.] The deified Amar-Sin calls himself "a true god, the sun of his land." [Amar-Sin was a ruler of Ur about a hundred years before the birth of Abraham.] If in the translation of Hammurabi's epithet we have used "sun" rather than "sun-god," while the Akkadian Shamshu may mean either, we have done so precisely because we consider these expressions to be metaphors. Moreover, the qualifications "of his land," "of Babylon," agree better with the translation "sun" than with the notion implied in the English "sun-god." In Egyptian texts of the New Kingdom we find similar expressions. However, these do not occur in older inscriptions but appear when Pharaoh's rightful dominion over the whole earth had been challenged by strong Asiatic peoples. Tuthmosis III is called "Ruler of Rulers, Sun of All Lands"; Seti I, "Re of Egypt and Moon of All Lands," or "King of Egypt, Re of the Nine Bows"- the latter being the traditional formula for foreign peoples. [Seti I was a pharaoh of the 13th century BC] These expressions are unusual in Egypt, where the normal way of comparing Pharaoh with the sun is based on the intimate relation between prototype and successor, progenitor and offspring. The fact that purely metaphorical comparisons between king and sun could arise even in Egypt adds force to the translation "sun" (rather than "sun-god") in Hammurabi's text. Moreover, if the expression "sun of Babylon" were not understood as a metaphor, it would be not only difficult to explain its use by Hammurabi, who never claimed divinity, but impossible to explain why the Late Assyrian kings often styled themselves "sun of the totality of mankind." Quite often the metaphorical character of this and similar uses of the word "sun" is unmistakable. It is so when Ur-Nam-mu of Ur [a king in the 21st century BC] is said to have been "predestined by Enlil to rule the land like Utu himself." Even the deified Lipit-Ishtar [a king of Isin when Abraham was a youth] uses the comparison with the sun quite clearly as a metaphor without claiming identity; and Hammurabi states, a little before the quotation we have given, that Anu and Enlil, when they chose Marduk as ruler over all men, also named him "to make legislation appear in the land, to destroy the evil and the wicked, so that the strong should not harm the weak, so that I should appear like the sun to the black-headed people and make light the land, and create well-being for mankind" (Code, I, 32-48).

“In dealing with Egyptian beliefs, we have described how the sun quite universally appears to be symbolical of order and hence also of the order of justice; and in this respect the king could be viewed, in Mesopotamia as elsewhere, as an image of the sun-god. Hence the prayer "may Ur-Ninurta, like Shamash, rule the country for many years," which resembles the words spoken nowadays in Westminster Abbey before the enthronement of the king of England, when the archbishop prays that God may establish his throne in righteousness, that "it may stand fast for evermore, like as the sun before him, and as the faithful witness in heaven.

“When the Mesopotamian king was compared with the sun, the essential distinction between the earthly prince and the sun-god was not ignored; and the same qualification applies to a number of phrases which were applied to the ruler as well as to the gods. None of these expresses an identity; all merely proclaim that, from the point of view of the subject, the king seems godlike. Hence we read in the prayer of an ill-fated Babylonian:

May the god who rejected me help me!

May the goddess who [resented me] have pity on me!

May the shepherd, the sun of men (the king), who

is like a god (be gracious to me)!

“In this derived sense the comparison of the king with the sun is common throughout the ancient Near East, but only in Egypt is there a precise theological concept implied in the view that the king is the image of the sun upon earth.” [5]

While Frankfurt did well enough here that we may hopefully establish the basis for our own assertions, he was not quite forceful enough in his conclusion. In the prologue to Hammurabi’s legal code we find the following:

When lofty Anum, king of the Anunnaki, (and) Enlil, lord of heaven and earth, the determiner of the destinies of the land, determined for Marduk, the first-born of Enki, the Enlil functions over all mankind [so Marduk had been granted the authority of the god Enlil on earth], made him great among the Igigi, called Babylon by its exalted name, made it supreme in the world, established for him in its midst an enduring kingship, whose foundations are as firm as heaven and earth — at that time Anum and Enlil named me to promote the welfare of the people, me, Hammurabi, the devout, god-fearing prince, to cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil, that the strong might not oppress the weak, to rise like the sun over the black-headed (people), and to light up the land. [6]

In Part 19 of our recent Genesis commentary, we hope to have sufficiently explained the fact that the phrase “black-headed people” was simply a term by which ancient kings from Sumer and down to the last of the Assyrians had identified the commoners who were their subjects. In Mesopotamia, sheep were often black-headed, and the ancient kings saw themselves as the shepherds of the people. The Babylon of Hammurabi did not endure very long as an empire, or even under the control of the Amorites, the Canaanite tribe from which Hammurabi had come. He lived during the time of the patriarch Isaac, and ruled Babylon for much of the first half of the 18th century BC.

However in the preamble to the legal code which we have just cited, it is fully evident that Hammurabi thought of himself as the “sun over the black-headed people” because he was their law-giver, as Frankfort had said, “the sun quite universally appears to be symbolical of order and hence also of the order of justice; and in this respect the king could be viewed”. Elsewhere in his legal code, Hammurabi had referred to himself as “… the sun of Babylon, who causes light to go forth over the lands of Sumer and Akkad…”

A couple of centuries later, in a treaty which the Hittite king Musilis I had made with another Amorite king, named Duppi-Tessub , we read in part in the opening sentence of the preamble: “These are the words of the Sun Mursilis, the great king, the king of the Hatti land…” Then in paragraph 3: “When my father became god and I seated myself on the throne of my father”, referring to his father and predecessor, Suppiluliumas. So the ancient Roman emperors had followed this same tradition, as they were also esteemed as gods after their deaths. Later in the treaty, in paragraph 8: “When I, the Sun, sought after you in accordance with your father's word and put you in your father's place, I took you in oath for the king of the Hatti land, the Hatti land, and for my sons and grandsons.” Then in paragraph 10: “As I, the Sun, am loyal toward you, do you extend military help to the Sun and the Hatti land.” So a Hittite king of the 17th century BC also esteemed for himself to have been the sun of his land. [7] there are other examples of this language in Hittite treaties with the Egyptians. [8]

Ostensibly, here in Isaiah chapter 14, the Word of Yahweh God is scoffing at the king of Babylon, since like these other ancient kings, he apparently claimed for himself to be the sun on earth, as we have just seen from Babylonian and other Near Eastern inscriptions. Being the sun on earth they gave the law and executed justice based upon their own law, just as we have already seen that the Persian king Xerxes had expected all of the nations which were subject to him to abide by his law. This exemplifies the wicked as they are portrayed in the Wisdom of Solomon, who exclaim that “Our strength must be the law of righteousness, for that which is weak is proved to be useless” (Wisdom 2:11).

Continuing with Isaiah, we will repeat verse 12 for context:

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! 13 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: 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

The concept expressed in verse 14, where it says “I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High”, reveals a more direct connection between this Babylon and the Babel of Genesis chapter 11 where the people building the tower of Babel are portrayed as having said: “4… Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” As a result, they were scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

The phrase “stars of God” is also a reference to the children of Israel. For example, in Job chapter 38 there is a Hebrew parallelism where we read “7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” In Judges chapter 5, where Israel defeated the Canaanites led by Sisera, the prophetess Deborah had sung “20 They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” In the prophecy of a little horn which would persecute the children of Yahweh, we read in Daniel chapter 8: “ 9 And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land. 10 And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them.” In that last verse, host also seems to be a parallelism for stars. Likewise, where we read the words attributed to the king of Babylon which say “I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north”, that too is a reference to the children of Israel, who were resettled in the lands north of Babylonia and even in lands north of Assyria. All of these references to a host and stars seem to indicate the fulfillment of the promises to Abraham, such as that which is found in Genesis chapter 26: “4 And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”

So the concept that this Lucifer is satan, as in a common adversary, is true, but not in the way that the Roman Catholic Church has ever imagined, or at least, admitted. This Lucifer is a satan, not “the Satan”, because only Yahweh God can rightfully be King and Law-giver over His people Israel, and where Isaiah attributes the words to the king of Babylon that “13 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: 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High” we see that man desiring to rule over the people of God contrary to the will of God is an adversary, a satan, in the face of God. But that satan is a man, and not some supernatural demon who can somehow rule on earth from some realm in heaven. Any and every man who has sought to rule over the children of Yahweh with his own law is essentially such a satan, seeking to occupy a position which rightfully belongs only to God.

It is for reason that these ancient pagan kings had imagined themselves to be the light-bearers, the Sun on earth, that we read in Revelation chapter 22 these words of Christ: “16 I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.” There he claims for Himself a title which had been claimed by the ancient pagan kings, as well as those of Babylon. But only Yahweh God, who is Yahshua Christ, is the true Light of the World, and for that reason He was declared to be the Light of the World by John the Baptist, then by Himself, and elsewhere in the Gospel of John. So in Revelation chapter 21, in a description of the City of God, we read in part: “23 And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.”

Now the king of Babylon is warned further of his coming humiliation:

15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. 16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; 17 That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?

Without the power and glory of his office and all of its attachments, here it is described as having seemed incredible that such a man could have ruled the entire world, and kept the people in fear and the nations in a state of agitation. Without his worldly accouterments, he was nothing. This king of Babylon is also charged with having “made the world a wilderness”, which only seems true in the far vision of the prophecy, of Mystery Babylon, and he was also charged with not having opened “the house of his prisoners”, which ostensibly means that he did not have any mercy for those who opposed him. This also describes modern governments, who are much more severe with political dissidents than they are with the rapists, robbers and murderers of their own citizens.

Here we shall pause our commentary on Isaiah chapter 14. When we proceed with this chapter of Isaiah we shall consider other ramifications in this prophecy which become even more apparent as the parable against the king of Babylon continues.

Footnotes:

1 Library of History, 2.43.4, Diodorus Siculus, translated by C. H. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1953, Jeffrey Henderson, editor, Volume 2, p. 29.

2 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament 3rd edition, James Pritchard, editor, 1969, Harvard University Press, p. 316.

3 The Histories, Herodotus, 7.64, translated by George Rawlinson, Everyman’s Library, Knopf, 1910, 1997, p. 537.

4 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, pp. 103, 198

5 Kingship and the Gods – A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature, Henri Frankfort, University of Chicago Press, 1948, pp. 307-308

6 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, p. 164

7 ibid., pp. 203-204

8 ibid., p. 257