What does Isaiah 14:12 mean?
Isaiah is delivering a mocking song to be sung by future Israelites after the downfall of the powerful, vicious king of Babylon. Now he is using poetic language to describe the epic heights of the king's arrogance from which he will fall. Still sarcastically using the form of a funeral dirge, Isaiah "mourns" how the king has fallen from heaven.This passage refers to this figure as Day star, son of the dawn." The word translated here as "day star" or "morning star" is the Hebrew term helēl'. This word is found nowhere else in the Old Testament. Many scholars understand helēl' as a reference to Venus, sometimes called the "morning star." Venus is an exceptionally bright point in the night sky, making it one of the last to be washed out by rising daylight. This day star disappears, or "falls from heaven," when the sun rises and overpowers its fading light. The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament, used the term h󠅍eōsphoros, which later Greek would render as phōsphoros. The Greek word literally means a "dawn-bringer," or possibly "light-bringer." So Latin versions such as the Vulgate translated it literally as lucifer, identical to the Latin name for the planet Venus.
Translations such as the KJV follow the lead of Latin versions, though they render the word helēl' as the proper name "Lucifer." Those versions typically make a different choice when the same term is used in Latin translations of 1 Peter 1:19, where that word is applied to Jesus Christ. Over the centuries, commentators noticed similarities between this description and passages about the fall of Satan from heaven (Revelation12:7–9; Luke 10:18). Writers such as Dante Alighieri and John Milton applied this directly in their work. Over time, it became traditional wisdom to use "Lucifer" as a proper name for the Devil.
Many scholars believe Isaiah was using the Canaanite myths of his time to mock the king of Babylon's ambitions. It is possible Isaiah is using this section of his song as a secondary reference to Satan. Yet that doesn't seem to be an important part of his message. The description of the king of Tyre in Ezekiel 28:12–19 is more directly related to the fall of Satan.
This verse concludes with Isaiah's observation that the one who saw himself as the morning star has fallen from his imagined home in heaven. He has come all the way down to the place of the dead. The one who laid the nations low by conquering one people after another with his cruel and relentless war machine has now been laid low himself.
