The Name Lucifer
THE NAME LUCIFER.
By Rev. Maurice G. Hansen,
It is much to be deplored that the euphonious and comprehensive name — light-bearer — should ever have been applied to the prince of "the rulers of the darkness of this world" so persistently, that it popularly has come to be considered as belonging exclusively to him. The fact is that in his case the title is thoroughly a misnomer. It only seems to apply when he "transforms himself into an angel of light." In the bestowal upon him, even by the Lord's servants, of a name which is the property alone of One who is the light itself, there is unfortunately no protest against this usurpation of the arch-deceiver. But how did Satan come to be so designated ?
The whole trouble arose from the effort to put into Is. XIV., 12 more than is really there. The words are: "How art thou fallen from heaven, הֵילֵל, son of the morning." Gesenius renders הֵילֵל "brilliant star," and says: "Aptly so, since it is followed by 'son of the morning.'" Now, the morning-star, as everyone knows who has seen it, is very beautiful because of its luminousness. Hence the Vulgate gives for the Hebrew הֵילֵל the Latin "Lucifer." The Staten-bybel reads "Morning-star, son of the dawn," and has this note: "That star is more brilliant than any other in the firmament because it alone causes an object to cast a shadow." The Septuagint gives the reading "early rising dawn-bringer" (ό έωσφόρος ό πρωί άνατέλλων).
This high-sounding title was applied metaphorically to the King of Babylon (Is. XIV., 4). This king was either Nebuchadnezzar, because of his eminence, and his temporary abasement, or, more probably, Belshazzar, because, in his death and in the capture of his capital, the Babylonian empire, as one of the great sovereignties of the earth, came to an end. In either case the morning-star represented a human being only, one who held a prominent earthly rank and was brought down to the grave.
Let us look at a gem from that casket of jewels, Bungener's "Bourdaloue and Louis XIV." Claude was in the Avenue of the Philosophers, surrounded by Fénélon, Bossuet, Flêchier, and others. The subject of his discourse was the sublimity of the Scriptural ideas of death and the nothingness of man. He spoke: "The most beautiful funeral oration that I know is the famous chapter (Is. xiv). A king dies. The nation asks if it be really true. They were so accustomed to see him live as if he were never to die, that they had almost come to believe that he never could die. But he is really dead. They raise their heads. For the first time they dare to fix their eyes upon this countenance before which they have so long bowed themselves to the dust. They had transformed their monarch into a giant. And now that he lies low, a few feet of ground is sufficient for him. Scarcely were his eyes closed upon this world, when he must open them in another world, and be a witness of his own interment in the depths of the tomb. All the kings of the nations are come to meet him. To salute him? No, to mingle among the rest of the dead, and to contemplate him confounded among the nameless crowd. And then burst forth beneath the infernal vaults these voices, these cries, this terrible and solemn chant of the grave's equality, 'How art thou fallen from heaven!'"
Why was more sought, under the prophet's highly figurative language, than the announcement of a plain historical fact and a most solemn lesson? It is to be regretted that occasion, has been given for the indignant protest of Dr. Henderson: "The application of this passage to Satan and to the fall of the apostate angels, is one of those gross perversions of sacred writ which so extensively obtain, and which are to be traced to a proneness to seek for more in any given passage than it really contains."
This particular example of "gross perversion of sacred writ" is of an early date. Not as early, however, as that impliedly assigned by Nägelsbach, who appears inclined to hold the Septuagint responsible for the error, because in their translation they changed the second person of the Hebrew תלפת into the third of the Greek (πῶς ἐξέπεσεν), the oratorical personal address into an exclamation of a general nature. By the change the eloquence of the prophet's apostrophe is sacrificed, but, still, in the view of the translators, the being to whom Isaiah refers may have been the human dethroned potentate only. Dr. Balthasar Bekker states, in his celebrated "The World Bewitched," that Athanasius, in his first and second books against the Arians, erroneously derives the overthrow of the devil from this text. Dr. Kitto declares that Tertullian and Gregory the Great, understood the prophet's language to refer to the same thing. The perversion of this passage probably originated at the beginning of the fourth century of the Christian era, and was adopted as sound interpretation by the theologians of the middle ages. The modern English commentators do not positively endorse it, but they seem indisposed to abandon it wholly, since it has become so firmly established in the minds of the readers of King James's version; and, indeed, of those of all other renderings of the original Scriptures. Scott says: "This language may refer to the fall of Satan and his angels," and directs us to the words of the Lord, Luke x., 18, "I saw Satan fall as lightning from heaven." Fausset, perceiving another allusion still, states that Antichrist shall hereafter assume the title Lucifer, and that "the Antichrist of Daniel, John and Paul alone shall exhaustively fulfill all the lineaments given in the prophet Isaiah's chapter." Barnes, on the other hand, distinctly rejects the mediaeval notion that the fall of the devil is taught in this text in the prophecy of Isaiah. After giving the beautiful Chaldee paraphrase—"How art thou fallen from on high who wert splendid among the sons of men"—he says, "There can be no doubt that the object in the eye of the prophet was the bright morning-star, and his design was to compare this magnificent Oriental monarch (the King of Babylon) with that." This is correct. There is no ground for the application, to the enemy of God and of man, of a name originally bestowed in a figure on a once powerful Babylonian prince, who, together with his empire, passed away when the design of Providence in their existence had been fulfilled. The title Light-bearer, in respect to every particular of the spiritual significance of the metaphor, belongs to Christ because of his inherent dignity, his soul-attracting charms, and his illuminating power in the midst of all moral darkness. To deprive him of that name is to rob him of a ray of his glory. He claims it. "I am the bright and morning star" (Rev. xxii., 16), is the witness which the glorified Redeemer bears to himself. That utterance is only the prolonged echo of the word that fell from the lips of the God-man before his passion had culminated in the awful scene on Calvary—"I am the light of the world"—that word itself, a divine commentary on the promise of old given by the prophet Malachi (iv., 2), "Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings."
Let the name "Illuminator" be restored to him to whom it properly belongs. Call Satan, Lucifer, as appropriately as Bread of Life, Good Shepherd, or any other title owned by our Lord Jesus in virtue of what he is to the starving, wandering sinner whom he invites to come to him. To everyone who, following Christ, "walks not in darkness but hath the light of life," he is "the day-star (φωσφόρος) who arises in their hearts" (2 Peter i., 19). In the Latin versions of the text in Isaiah which has been considered, and of the above statement of the apostle Peter, the word lucifer, occuring in each, should have been printed with a capital L only in the latter instance, and not, as unfortunately is the case, in the former alone.