"LUCIFER,"
OR "HOWL!" IN ISAIAH 14:12?
FROM: UNSEARCHABLE RICHES MAGAZINE, MARCH 2000
Published by: THE CONCORDANT PUBLISHING CONCERN
Some Comments From The Editor:
As some of the visitors to my web site already know, I had a three-part series of articles posted, which I personally wrote, on the subject of Lucifer. I have withdrawn those articles, because I have come to see that they were hopelessly in error. I am not ashamed to admit this, because this is simply something known as progress. Everybody makes mistakes on the long road of learning, and it is essential that, when we do err, we need to acknowledge it, and correct it . That is what is being done now.
Coming to the correct understanding, that the name Lucifer is foreign to the original language Scriptures, and wrongly supplied in translations of them, is absolutely essential toward the unlearning of much error.Thanks be to Christ Jesus for providing the likes of the Concordant Publishing Concern, and others, whose expositions of Scripture help many to a correct understanding of what is true.
A correspondent wrote to The CPC with a question, which was subsequently published in the Questions and Answers Section of the above mentioned publication. Here, then, is that question with its superb answer:
Question:
A year or so ago, I bought your book,The Problem of Evil and the Judgments of God, by A. E. Knoch, and have enjoyed it immensely.
On page 41, it explains that the word "Lucifer" should never really appear in the Bible, and, is actually the word "howl." All of the texts in which this Hebrew word in question is used are given as well as a fairly detailed explanation of the problem, which is adequate for me.
However, when I try to tell others about this, they look in Strong’s Concordance and say, "No, the word ‘Lucifer’ is a totally different word from ‘Howl.’ They each even have different numbers in the concordance." And, in Strong’s Concordance, if you look at the Hebrew word for "Howl," in the Hebrew letters of which it is therein comprised, the word obviously does look different from the word translated as "Lucifer."
Now, I admit, this is like the blind leading the blind, as I am not a Hebrew scholar, nor are the people to whom I am talking. However, these folks then point out that the Hebrew scholars who translated all the other versions of the Bible we know of (including the Authorized Version, New International Version, etc.), evidently (i.e., since they translate accordingly), understand that the word for "Lucifer" is different from the word for 'Howl.' "So," these folks conclude, "Why should we believe the Concordant people when they claim that the word is the same?"
Answer:
Your question concerns Isaiah 14:12a, which the Concordant Version translates, "How you have fallen from the heavens! Howl, son of the dawn!" yet the Authorized Version renders, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" This, as you know, is a principal text from which the traditional doctrine known as "The fall of Satan" has been derived. "In this text, Isaiah’s description of the king of Babylon in the yet future day of Israel’s restoration, is ...taken as referring to Satan’s fall in the past (Isa.14:3-20)....As this is still future, it can hardly refer to Satan’s primeval ‘fall.’ At that time, Satan will have been literally cast out from heaven (Rev.12:9; cp Luke 10:18). But these facts give us no license to identify the two.
There will be a king of Babylon who will arrogate divine honors to himself and who will lord it over the kings of the nations, and who will shake kingdoms. Yet he is a man(Isa.14:16), and Satan is not a man.
"Moreover,an examination of the Hebrew text will convince anyone that the evidence for the title ‘Lucifer’ is exceedingly slight. It is precisely the same word which the translators [themselves] rendered ‘howl’ in Zechariah 11:2. In the feminine it occurs again in this very chapter, at the beginning of verse 31. In slightly different forms, it is found again in Isaiah ten times, and it is always rendered howl (13:6; 15:2,3; 16:7; 23:1,6,14; 52:5; 65:14). There is no valid reason why Isaiah 14:12 should not be rendered, ‘Howl!’ instead of ‘Lucifer.’ This name is a human invention, and should have no place in the Scriptures.
Your friends, however, having been taught that Satan was once a righteous angel named "Lucifer," who, long ago, through the misuse of his free will, one day "fell" into sin, are reluctant to accept these simple facts. In addition, since they have noted in Strong’s Concordance that the entries "Lucifer" and "Howl" have different numbers and reflect different spellings according to the typeset Hebrew corresponding to these respective entries, they suppose that what we say must be mistaken. They further suppose that such a conclusion is warranted, since popular theology approves the doctrine of Satan’s fall, and popular, modern translations follow the Authorized Version in the rendering "Lucifer" or its equivalent. In giving consideration to scholarly opinion, it is necessary to investigate much more widely and probe far deeper than Strong’s Concordance. In addition, most not only do not appreciate its limitations, but more especially fail to recognize their own. Hence they often reason to mistaken conclusions as the result of their own misuse of this potentially helpful tool. The simple fact is that "‘Lucifer’ was ...manufactured by translators. The Hebrew word ill is translated ‘howl’ by them more than twenty-five times. Once only, for decorative effect, they rendered it ‘Lucifer’(Isa.14:12). It occurs with precisely the same letters in Zechariah 11:2 and Ezekiel 21:12, where they have rendered it howl. Our word yell is practically the same in sound and significance."
In Strong’s Concordance, the word used in Isaiah 14:12 is assigned the number: 1966. But the Hebrew word used in Zechariah 11:2 and Ezekiel 21:12 is assigned the number 3212. This is simply because the verb "howl" is listed under its main form, ill which has different spellings in different places, depending on the form of the verb. The spelling of the verb "howl" in Zechariah 11:2 and Ezekiel 21:12 is just the same as the spelling of the word translated "Lucifer" in Isaiah 14:12. In all these places the word has an extra letter, which we might show in English as: eill. In each of these texts, the word is a verb, in the Hiphil (cause) form, imperative mood. Most modern commentaries and lexicons do not identify the word in Isaiah 14:12 as associated with the verb in Zechariah 11:2, etc., even though the spelling is the same. But we found this information from the Hebrew and English Lexicon of John Parkhurst (1823): "[The word in Isaiah 14:12] is in its form more like to the verb ...howl, than to the noun, and accordingly the Syriac translation renders it here howl, and even Jerome on the place [i.e., in that location] observes that it literally means howl" (p.152).
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