Isaiah 14:12-14 [Holman Christian Standard Bible - HCSB]
Shining morning star, how you have fallen from the heavens! You said to yourself: ...I will make myself like the Most High
Some people say that <morning star> here refers to the king of Babylon and that this verse does not refer to Satan. If we look at the context, <how you have fallen from the heavens>, the king of Babylon did not fall from the heavens. From the whole context, it is clear that this talks about Ha-Satan as the morning star.
But then, in the New Testament in Revelation we read
Revelation 22:16 [TS]
I, יהושע... I am the Root and the Offspring of Dawid, the Bright and Morning Star
[words of Yeshua in purple]
Here we have a serious contradiction:
a) In Isaiah Satan is the ‘morning star’
b) In Revelation Yeshua is supposedly the ‘morning star.
How do we explain this contradiction?
Some people say that the King James version solves the problem
Isaiah 14:12-14 [KJV]
12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!...
13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God...
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
So, they say that the King James Version does not call Satan the morning star, it calls him Lucifer. But the Latin word Lucifer is just a name for the ‘morning star’. So, the King James version does not solve the contradiction at all.
Let us also look at the Hebrew text of Isaiah 14. Transliterated, it says «heylel ben shachar»:
«heylel» – literally means shiner
«ben shachar» – son of the morning
«Ben» (son) is an idiom, it is known that Isaiah often used archaic, poetic language, all this phrase means is ‘shiner of the morning’.
In the context of falling from the heaven and saying, <I will rise up above the stars of El>, it is clear that the ‘morning shiner’ here refers to the morning star. Basically, all translations of the Bible, translate this as ‘day star’, ‘morning star’ or Lucifer. These are just various terms or names for the same thing, for the morning star. And the morning star says, “I will make myself like the ‘Most High’ and now we have the problem that Yeshua and HaSatan have the same title in most Bibles, they are both called the ‘morning star’.
MORNING STAR MENTIONED TWICE IN GREEK REVELATION
The following two verses are translated from the Greek
Revelation 2:28 [HCSB]
26 The one who is victorious and keeps My works to the end: I will give him
authority over the nations...
... ... ...
28 ...I will also give him the morning star.
If you overcome, do you want the ‘morning star’, Lucifer, Satan? How is this explained? Where is the sense in this?
And then
Revelation 22:16
“I, Jesus... I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright Morning Star.”
So, according to the Greek Revelation, Yeshua claims “I am the Bright Morning Star”. Is this really true? Is Satan the shining ‘morning star’? Or is Yeshua the shining ‘morning star’? How is this contradiction explained?
INSIGHT FROM THE HEBREW REVELATION
Is there any insight that we can that we can gain from the Hebrew version of the book of Revelation? (see a complete Hebrew Revelation transcript and translation at hebrewgospels.com)
Revelation 2:27-28
And like I received from my father, so will, so I will give him the light (shachar)
Here, shachar, on its own, does not mean ‘morning star’, it simply means light or morning light. It can also mean ‘glory’ because in Hebrew light and glory are sometimes interchanged. You can see this in the translation of the Hebrew Gospel of John, where Yeshua uses light to mean glory.
‘LIGHT’ SYNONYMOUS WITH ‘GLORY’
John 17:5 [Translated from Vat. Ebr.100]
Therefore, you Father, will glorify me with you, even with that light which I had with you before the world was created
In the Tanakh (Old Testament) and in the prophet Isaiah, the Hebrew word «shachar» is used positively, and it does not mean ‘morning star’
Isaiah 8:20
To the Torah and the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word,it is because they have no light (shachar)
The converse would be that those who do speak according to the Torah and the Testimony will have light.
So, there is no problem when Yeshua says, <he who overcomes I will give him light (shachar) or glory> it does not mean ‘morning star’ at all.
Let us look at the second and most important verse here in Revelation where in the Greek version Yeshua supposedly claimed that he was the ‘morning star’, whereas the Hebrew version renders it
Revelation 22:16 I Yeshua... even I am the root of the families of David.
That is the end of the verse, it does not add the ‘Bright Morning Star’ which does not exist in the Hebrew Revelation.
WHO IS THE MORNING STAR?
Going back to Isaiah 14, take note that it does not say that Satan calls himself the ‘morning star’. This is a prophecy that Elohim gives through the prophet Isaiah, and He calls Satan «heylel ben shachar», the shiner of the morning or the ‘shining morning star’. And the ‘morning star’ said, according to Isaiah, «I will make myself like the Most High» – Isaiah 14:14. One of the ways in which Satan tries to do this is that he managed to give Yeshua the same title in the Greek New Testament that he received in the Hebrew Old Testament. It is in the Greek New Testament that Yeshua and Satan have the same title. However, in the Hebrew Revelation, there is no mention of the ‘morning star’ at all.
Now let us look at 2 Peter
2 Peter 1:19
And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts
This is the verse where the Latin New Testament says “Lucifer rises in your hearts” because that is the Latin word for ‘morning star’. Because of the mistranslation in Revelation 22, people believe that Yeshua is the ‘morning star’ and they see that Yeshua comes up in our hearts. But Yeshua never said he is the ‘morning star’ and by the way, it does not make sense to say that we need to pay attention to the prophetic word until the ‘morning star’ or Lucifer comes up in our hearts.
We will use an example of a Hebrew manuscript of the New Testament, The Cambridge University Library Oo. 1.32, which contains many books of the New Testament. Most of these are not authentic and are just translated from the Aramaic Peshitta, but some are interesting. The books of James and Jude have been translated from this manuscript and are available at hebrewgospels.com.
Let us see what it says in 2 Peter 1
2 Peter 1:19 [Oo.1.32] ... until the day comes and the morning light arises in your hearts.
The Hebrew word «shachar» does not mean ‘morning star’. In this particular case, even the Ginsburg translation of the New Testament managed to solve the contradiction because he translated it as «shachar» and rather than «cohav ha sachar». So, they managed to solve this contradiction just by translating the Greek New Testament back into Hebrew. But the previous two verses that we just looked up in Revelation cannot be solved by translating the Greek text back into Hebrew, they are only solved by the original Hebrew text of Revelation.
YESHUA IS NOT THE MORNING STAR, YESHUA IS NOT LUCIFER.
● Isaiah 14 clearly refers to Satan as the ‘morning star’, even in the King James version because that is what Lucifer means
● The Hebrew New Testament, and specially the Hebrew Revelation, makes no mention of Yeshua being the ‘morning star’.
● We can conclude, based on the Hebrew Tanakh and based on the Hebrew New Testament, especially the Hebrew Revelation, that Yeshua is not the ‘morning star’, Yeshua is not Lucifer.
Source:
Justin Rensburg – herewgospels.com