With the Easter season now past, and the ever-present issues of the identity of the historical Jesus in the news, I thought I would tackle an interesting question that I received recently:Revelation 22:16 says, \”I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.\” but then I read in Isaiah 14:12 where it says, \”How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth,you who once laid low the nations!\”
I was always told that the Isaiah passage was talking about the Devil and how he was cast out of heaven so how can Jesus AND the Devil both be the morning star?”); ?>Good question! There are a couple of parts I want to address. Firstly the comment “I was always told that the Isaiah passage was talking about the Devil” - it’s a common teaching in the church but we must not allow present day teaching to confuse our study of a passage of scripture; if we carry a preconceived notion of a passage back into our study, we’ll often not see what a given passage of scripture said to its original audience. The first question to ask when studying is “what did the original author intend to say to his/her intended audience?”
In context, the passage in Isaiah is a message of hope for the nation of Israel (a prophesy of their eventual return from captivity in Babylon) and a message of judgement against the king of Babylon. In its original context this passage is directed at a pagan king puffed up with pride.
The early church looked back at the passage, written about 800 years before their time, and interpreted it in light of what they already knew of the teachings of the New Testament. Notably, 2 Corinthians 11:14 (”And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.“) and Luke 10:18-19 (”And he said to them, ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you.’“) It seemed obvious to equate the object of Isaiah 14 with the devil in this light of these New Testament passages. When you read Revelation chapter 12 speak of a dragon sweeping a third of the stars from the sky, and being cast down itself, the already established teaching equating Isaiah 14 with the fall of the devil is a nice aid in interpretting the language of the last book of the bible. This teaching stitches together passages separated from one another by 800 years of which some are written in poetic and figurative language. Its shaky at best.
There are two answers to the overall question “how can Jesus AND the Devil both be the morning star“. Firstly, we must recognize that both of the passages in question use poetic and figurative language to communicate their meaning. In this scenario I would conclude that the term morning star is more of a descriptive term, a role or a title than a proper noun. So rather than being a specific name of Jesus, the devil or a king of Babylon this is a generic term and there’s no point in making the association; just because I greet two of my friends “hey dude” doesnt mean that they are the same person, a singular individual who’s name is “Dude”.
The second answer to the question rests (again) on the use of language. We have a span of 800 years represented in the question asked. Languages change over time (for a nice description of this, see entries on Semantic change and Semantic drift in Wikipedia). For example, in the time of William Shakespeare (a mere 400 years ago), the term “gay” meant happy or colourful whereas today it’s either used as a derogatory adjective by some groups or more widely used as a synonym of “homosexual”. Even if “morning star” was a proper noun in Isaiah’s time, 800 years of semantic drift means it’s not possible to equate it to anything when you read the book of Revelation. Each instance needs to stand alone and be interpretted alone.
I hope that helps to clear up any confusion! Questions relating to this topic, or any other, would be more than welcome - drop me an email or leave me a comment!