Lucifer & the Anointed Cherub

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gcdonner
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Lucifer & the Anointed Cherub

Post by gcdonner »

Today in the bible study I was teaching, I was asked about Satan and Lucifer, whether they were the same entity.
There is widespread belief amongst Christians, that Lucifer is a name for satan or the devil. I wonder where that idea comes from?
The name Lucifer is used only once in scripture:
Isa_14:12  How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
In the context it is referring to the king of Babylon. It means day star, morning star or light bearer.
I understand that some of the apostolic fathers associated this passage with Lk 10:18
Luk 10:18  And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. 
I find no justification for it, do you?

A similar leap is also made of the passage in Ezek 28 about the "anointed cherub". There are some pretty fantastic sermons preached tying all these things together, but are they justified or are they taking these passages out of their intended context and forcing them into fanciful and imaginative interpretations?

What say ye?
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Re: Lucifer & the Anointed Cherub

Post by Josh »

gcdonner wrote:A similar leap is also made of the passage in Ezek 28 about the "anointed cherub". There are some pretty fantastic sermons preached tying all these things together, but are they justified or are they taking these passages out of their intended context and forcing them into fanciful and imaginative interpretations?

What say ye?
My friends that I respect as authorities on Old Testament biblical texts and Hebrew scholarship would say that tying all those things together is not justified. The words used for Satan, the serpent, the devil, or devils (sometimes it is plural or the Hebrew is ambiguous/inconsistent there), Lucifer, the adversary, etc. do not have the strong connection that is nowadays almost assumed as orthodoxy in evangelical circles.
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Re: Lucifer & the Anointed Cherub

Post by MattY »

I don't think "Lucifer" in Is. 14:12 was actually intended as a "name" for the devil. "Lucifer" is actually just a transliteration of the Latin word for "morning star" - the KJV translators just duplicated the term used in the Latin Vulgate because the Hebrew word is used only once in the Old Testament and they didn't know what to make of it. Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate, knew Hebrew better than the KJV translators, but even he was uncertain about the meaning of the Hebrew word. But at least he made an attempt at a translation. This link helps explain.

https://bible.org/article/lucifer-devil ... anslations
The word means ‘constellations’ or ‘crowns’ (modern translators are not sure, though ‘constellations’ is usually preferred). The fact that Jerome recognized that at least the ‏מזרות probably referred to stars is far better than the KJV translators did by leaving the word completely untranslated.
That said, I have two things to add:
1) I don't mind calling the devil "Lucifer", especially when referring to his pre-fall existence; we don't know what his actual name was, but it could have been Lucifer, and we all know what it means when someone uses the name.

2) While I doubt Is. 14:12 intended it as the devil's proper name, I do believe the devil is partly in view here. I think this is one of the double-fulfillment prophecies. In the short term, the prophecy refers to the Babylonian king; but verses 12-15 seem to go beyond the description of a mortal king. So the secondary fulfillment is in the pride and fall of the devil, whom the king of Babylon is a type of. Also, Luke 10:18 (which you mentioned) and Rev. 9:1 seem to connect to this passage. Plus, some in the early church - Tertullian, Origen, and Augustine - interpreted it as referring to Antichrist. So I think this view seems reasonable solid based on the sense of the passage itself, plus interpreting scripture with other scripture, plus tradition. :)

The same goes for the anointed cherub in Ezekiel 28 - I see that as a double fulfillment also. It goes far beyond the description of a mere mortal far more than the Isaiah passage, and just makes more sense as a double fulfillment, in which Ezekiel is saying the king of Tyre is a type of Satan.
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Re: Lucifer & the Anointed Cherub

Post by MattY »

Sorry, the last word here was a typo:
Plus, some in the early church - Tertullian, Origen, and Augustine - interpreted it as referring to Antichrist.
It should have said: "some in the early church - Tertullian, Origen, and Augustine - interpreted it as referring to Satan." Hippolytus thought it referred to Antichrist, and I must have typo'ed the sentence in the original comment while thinking about that.
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Re: Lucifer & the Anointed Cherub

Post by gcdonner »

buckeyematt2 wrote:I don't think "Lucifer" in Is. 14:12 was actually intended as a "name" for the devil. "Lucifer" is actually just a transliteration of the Latin word for "morning star" - the KJV translators just duplicated the term used in the Latin Vulgate because the Hebrew word is used only once in the Old Testament and they didn't know what to make of it. Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate, knew Hebrew better than the KJV translators, but even he was uncertain about the meaning of the Hebrew word. But at least he made an attempt at a translation. This link helps explain.

https://bible.org/article/lucifer-devil ... anslations
The word means ‘constellations’ or ‘crowns’ (modern translators are not sure, though ‘constellations’ is usually preferred). The fact that Jerome recognized that at least the ‏מזרות probably referred to stars is far better than the KJV translators did by leaving the word completely untranslated.
That said, I have two things to add:
1) I don't mind calling the devil "Lucifer", especially when referring to his pre-fall existence; we don't know what his actual name was, but it could have been Lucifer, and we all know what it means when someone uses the name.

2) While I doubt Is. 14:12 intended it as the devil's proper name, I do believe the devil is partly in view here. I think this is one of the double-fulfillment prophecies. In the short term, the prophecy refers to the Babylonian king; but verses 12-15 seem to go beyond the description of a mortal king. So the secondary fulfillment is in the pride and fall of the devil, whom the king of Babylon is a type of. Also, Luke 10:18 (which you mentioned) and Rev. 9:1 seem to connect to this passage. Plus, some in the early church - Tertullian, Origen, and Augustine - interpreted it as referring to Antichrist. So I think this view seems reasonable solid based on the sense of the passage itself, plus interpreting scripture with other scripture, plus tradition. :)

The same goes for the anointed cherub in Ezekiel 28 - I see that as a double fulfillment also. It goes far beyond the description of a mere mortal far more than the Isaiah passage, and just makes more sense as a double fulfillment, in which Ezekiel is saying the king of Tyre is a type of Satan.
Double fulfillment? By what criteria do you make that assertion? I think you misunderstand the use of apocalyptic language in these passages. While connecting the dots seems to make for hair raising sermons, it doesn't fit well with how scripture itself uses it. The early church fathers weren't inspired...
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Re: Lucifer & the Anointed Cherub

Post by haithabu »

Your (buckeyematt2) take on it agrees with my own understanding.

I and another man are just about finished teaching a class on Revelation, and the book is chock full of allusions back to the prophets, using their subject matter (judgments on Babylon and Tyre for example) as sources of its own symbols and in many cases using phrasing which seems to deliberately invoke the earlier prophecies.

Revelation reminds me of a roman a clef, a coded story in which you need to know the real personages and events referred to to get the author's meaning. Only in this case the clef, or code key lies in the portions, phrasing and symbols alluded to in the OT. Which is only natural since Revelation presents itself as a summing up of all things.

Since Revelation's allusions to the Babylon and Tyre of OT prophecy suggest that those kingdoms prefigure the final kingdom of the antiChrist, it's not hard to see the prophesies pertaining to their kings as applying to the Dragon and/or the Beast as well. Especially in the view of the unusual language as you've pointed out.
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Re: Lucifer & the Anointed Cherub

Post by MattY »

gcdonner wrote:
buckeyematt2 wrote:
Double fulfillment? By what criteria do you make that assertion? I think you misunderstand the use of apocalyptic language in these passages. While connecting the dots seems to make for hair raising sermons, it doesn't fit well with how scripture itself uses it. The early church fathers weren't inspired...
By what criteria? Well, I think my original post explained my reasoning. :) If you are asking for maybe some additional over-arching criteria that can be applied to any passage to determine whether there is a double fulfillment, I don't think there is such criteria, beyond just doing what I did: analyzing the specific passage in question and using other scriptures to help interpret.

If you doubt the idea of double fulfillment in general, I doubt I can persuade you otherwise, but I believe it is pretty well established. It occurs in many of the Messianic psalms, where David is immediately in mind, but Christ is the full, literal fulfillment; it occurs in Is. 14:7, where the immediate fulfillment is in one of Ahaz's sons - meaning that before a young maiden gets married, conceives, and has a son who "knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good", the two kings Ahaz is currently afraid of will no longer be a problem (probably within two years or so). But the final fulfillment is that a literal virgin will conceive and have a son who literally will be "God with us". Isaiah 40:1-5 is fulfilled in at least two or three stages - the return from exile in Babylon, the first advent of Christ announced by John the Baptist, and the second coming where "all flesh shall see it together" (cf. Rev. 1:7).

In these two passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel, I don't think the issue is important enough to warrant a dogmatic, passionate disagreement or anything like that. But at the same time, I think the arguments both for and against identifying Satan in these passages are not particularly strong. So if a person already leans one way or another, the arguments will probably not be strong enough to persuade him to change his position. There are probably underlying assumptions involved about hermeneutics, and some are probably biased towards accepting only a near fulfillment, while others are biased toward accepting both the near fulfillment and the "far" or more literal fulfillment as well (with both being necessary for the complete fulfillment of the passage - perhaps the "near" application is like a validation or a down payment on the "far" or second application).

Just my two cents - no offense. :)
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Re: Lucifer & the Anointed Cherub

Post by gcdonner »

buckeyematt2 wrote:
gcdonner wrote:
buckeyematt2 wrote:
Double fulfillment? By what criteria do you make that assertion? I think you misunderstand the use of apocalyptic language in these passages. While connecting the dots seems to make for hair raising sermons, it doesn't fit well with how scripture itself uses it. The early church fathers weren't inspired...
By what criteria? Well, I think my original post explained my reasoning. :) If you are asking for maybe some additional over-arching criteria that can be applied to any passage to determine whether there is a double fulfillment, I don't think there is such criteria, beyond just doing what I did: analyzing the specific passage in question and using other scriptures to help interpret.

If you doubt the idea of double fulfillment in general, I doubt I can persuade you otherwise, but I believe it is pretty well established. It occurs in many of the Messianic psalms, where David is immediately in mind, but Christ is the full, literal fulfillment; it occurs in Is. 14:7, where the immediate fulfillment is in one of Ahaz's sons - meaning that before a young maiden gets married, conceives, and has a son who "knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good", the two kings Ahaz is currently afraid of will no longer be a problem (probably within two years or so). But the final fulfillment is that a literal virgin will conceive and have a son who literally will be "God with us". Isaiah 40:1-5 is fulfilled in at least two or three stages - the return from exile in Babylon, the first advent of Christ announced by John the Baptist, and the second coming where "all flesh shall see it together" (cf. Rev. 1:7).

In these two passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel, I don't think the issue is important enough to warrant a dogmatic, passionate disagreement or anything like that. But at the same time, I think the arguments both for and against identifying Satan in these passages are not particularly strong. So if a person already leans one way or another, the arguments will probably not be strong enough to persuade him to change his position. There are probably underlying assumptions involved about hermeneutics, and some are probably biased towards accepting only a near fulfillment, while others are biased toward accepting both the near fulfillment and the "far" or more literal fulfillment as well (with both being necessary for the complete fulfillment of the passage - perhaps the "near" application is like a validation or a down payment on the "far" or second application).

Just my two cents - no offense. :)
I understand the use of double fulfillment under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit through the NT writers, but when we start doing it ourselves, based on our own imaginations that seems to go beyond the allowance of our privilege. It is just this kind of bible interpretation that has brought forth such things as the "Left Behind" series and others. It becomes bible fiction, not bible interpretation.
While it may sound good, it isn't a good practice to get into. In our modern, Western mindset we are often ignorant of the use of hyperbole, symbolism, and apocalyptic language to describe natural phenomena in what seems to us to be wildly cataclysmic terms. We can certainly draw out universal principles from passages like crossing the Reed Sea, but would you say that it was only the first fulfillment looking towards another later on?
How many times has the second coming taken place? Double fulfillment for the destruction of the temple & Jerusalem? These kinds of things make the word of God of none effect, by way of our traditions and imaginations.

These passages may "seem" to our minds to be tied together, but I find nothing in scripture or the contexts to warrant such interpretations. Our imaginations are wonderful things so long as we don't allow them to run away with us.
Think about it?
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Re: Lucifer & the Anointed Cherub

Post by TeleBodyofChrist »

gcdonner wrote:Today in the bible study I was teaching, I was asked about Satan and Lucifer, whether they were the same entity.
There is widespread belief amongst Christians, that Lucifer is a name for satan or the devil. I wonder where that idea comes from?
The name Lucifer is used only once in scripture:
Isa_14:12  How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
In the context it is referring to the king of Babylon. It means day star, morning star or light bearer.
I understand that some of the apostolic fathers associated this passage with Lk 10:18
Luk 10:18  And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. 
I find no justification for it, do you?

A similar leap is also made of the passage in Ezek 28 about the "anointed cherub". There are some pretty fantastic sermons preached tying all these things together, but are they justified or are they taking these passages out of their intended context and forcing them into fanciful and imaginative interpretations?

What say ye?
I honestly do not know where this comes from. I was taught this as a child and every Christian I grew up with thinks this. I was told the devil has many names. I remember being confused when I read the bible for myself.

I was also told the devil was the serpent in the garden of Eden. I remember asking as a child how the serpent in the garden was the devil. I was told the devil was controlling the serpent to make it deceive Eve because Satan is the great deceiver or something to that effect.

The scripture in Gen. 3 did not say all of that so, I am not sure where all of that came from.
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Re: Lucifer & the Anointed Cherub

Post by Josh »

As far as I know the Lucifer thing started with Dante.
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