Week 23 Isaiah 13-14
There’s a long prophecy about Babylon in Isaiah 13 & 14. It’s about 45-verses long and one of the things Isaiah says is: how you have fallen from heaven, you star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who defeated the nations!
The tricky thing here is the expression you star of the morning. I checked a bunch of other bible versions and I found that about 13 of them (roughly 25%) used the name Lucifer instead of star of the morning.
It’s a bit of a mystery because the prophecy is against the king of Babylon and I figure that the natural way to understand this verse is that Isaiah was saying that the king (the star-of-the-morning) was going to be defeated (fall from-the-sky).
The more complicated way is to say that the star of the morning is not the king. It’s actually Lucifer (Satan). The 13 versions that use Lucifer figured that Isaiah quit talking about Babylon and suddenly started talking about the Devil.
So I’m left to wonder: is Isaiah 14:12-15 talking about Satan? Was Isaiah talking about the king of Babylon and then about Lucifer the Devil?
Obviously some Bible versions think so and they write it up that way (star-of-the-morning = Lucifer / Satan). But to me it seems like that’s going out-on-a-limb.
I think Isaiah is totally capable of changing lanes without telling me. I’m just not sure he’s doing that here.
Note: quote from Isaiah 14:12 (NASB)