WHO THE HELL IS THE DEVIL?
“How you are fallen from Heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!” Isaiah 14:12
As a child, I was taught that Lucifer, Satan, and the Devil were all one being. In some ways, I looked at it as the unholy trinity, the dark counterpart to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit of Christianity. My limited theological understanding came from half-understood Sunday School explanations, and the dim picture that formed in my head was of God’s naughty child sent to eternal time out. I thought that if I prayed for the Devil, the Lord would have mercy on him; even as a kid I was susceptible to the subtle lie espoused by things like Paradise Lost that whispered, “Don’t you think God was a little too harsh?”
Who was I praying for though? Media has repeatedly painted Lucifer as a tragic figure—as someone whose crime was more misplaced heroism than outright rebellion. Even the pieces that depict him as a villain still carry a sort of wistfulness about them, as if subtly acknowledging that they believe he was wronged, actually. Like Prometheus stealing fire from the gods to give humanity a chance at civilization, Lucifer is depicted as the Robin Hood of enlightenment. One of my sources even went so far as to call him a holy spirit, come to save us from the darkness of religion. (Go ahead and check blasphemy and antichrist off your bingo cards.)
But are Lucifer and the Devil the same person? And is the Devil Satan? And is Satan Hillary Clinton? (No, wait, scratch that last part. I had my notes upside down.)
The first thing we have to do is make like Voltaire and define our terms.
New Phone, Who Dis?
While the Latin Vulgate translates several titles in the Bible as Lucifer, including a couple references to Jesus, the famous passage in Isaiah remains unique. The original Hebrew (shachar ben helel or helel ben shakhar), which is translated to “Day Star, Son of Dawn”, is found only once in the Bible. When translated literally it means, “Exalted One, son of Shahar (spellings will vary enormously—if you complain about my usages, I will hunt you for sport).
It is interesting, of course, that the Bible refers to Jesus as “the Bright and Morning Star”, which seems to echo somewhat the figure of Lucifer or at least the generality of angels, but that’s a separate conversation. I would argue that a great weakness of the Latin Vulgate is its obfuscation of this very specific reference in Isaiah. By choosing to use Lucifer as a catchall translation, it inadvertently brings Jesus down to the level of a fallen being and muddies the theological waters.
Shahar is a Hebrew word meaning “dawn,” but it is also a person. In Canaanite and Ugartic mythology, we find the lesser-known twin gods, Shahar and Shalim (sometimes spelled Salim or Salem or some variation thereof, and occasionally presenting as female). Shahar was the morning star, Shalim the evening star. Thus, combined, the two represented the duality of the planet Venus.
If the alternate spelling, Salem, caught your eye, that’s likely because it’s believed by scholars to be the root of the name Jerusalem, and further evidence for this comes from the fact that the city is built on two hills said by some to represent the twins. (But what do I know? I am no scholar; I just try to rite gud.)
So is the Bible actually referring to this Canaanite deity, or is it calling Lucifer the morning star for some other reason? I choose option three. Isaiah 14 is a prophecy against the king of Babylon. This is one of two chapters in the Bible where God calls out a monarch while at the same time referencing Lucifer’s fall (it’s called multitasking). In this case, I believe when Isaiah says, “Exalted one, son of Shachar,” he’s announcing the king of Babylon’s spiritual father is Lucifer (a little bit like saying you’re mom’s a ho). In other words, the king is operating under the authority of Lucifer (or under a Luciferian spirit) and will share in the same fall that Lucifer experienced.
Ezekiel 28 is very similar to Isaiah 14, except it does not refer to Lucifer by name and is aimed at the King of Tyre. Two pieces in Ezekiel 28 stand out for my purposes:
“You were in Eden, the garden of God…You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you.” Ezekiel 28:13-14
In the great whodunit of the Bible, this puts Lucifer at the scene of the crime. He was in the garden, and he was supposed to be guarding something. We’ll circle back to this passage in a minute.
Speaking of guardian cherubs, in my research I found parallels between Shahar and Shamsiel, who in the Zohar is stated to have been a guardian cherub in Eden and one of two assistants to Uriel. (You may remember that Uriel is believed to be the angel left in charge of protecting the garden after the fall. The great philosopher Abby Libby argues that Uriel will eventually fall himself.) In the book of Enoch, Shamsiel is the Watcher who teaches the signs of the sun to the humans, potentially introducing sun worship.
Do I find this connection particularly strong? Not necessarily. Do I consider it load-bearing to my argument? No, but I thought it was cool, and now you have a fun fact you may not have known before.
Moving on.
Get Thee Behind Me Satan
Though it can be used as a proper noun, the word satan also refers to a classification of demons and is translated to mean “adversaries” or “the adversary.” We find it in passages like Job 1-2 where the Adversary is given permission to test Job’s faithfulness.
If we step outside the safe scope of the Bible into the dubious waters of the Slavonic Enoch, we find an archangel named Satan-Sataniel who seeks to place his throne above God and is consequently hurled down along with his angel followers. Legend has it that he remains suspended in the sky, perpetually falling into the abyss. This Satan-Sataniel is also associated with Samael, who in Jewish Kabbalah, is the head of the satans and also the angel of death. He is said to ride a giant snake that just so happens to be the same snake that seduced Eve in the garden. (The car I drive to work every day is also very seductive, so I completely understand how something like this might happen.)
Origen, Augustine, and St. Anslem are considered to be some of the first to make the connection between Satan and Lucifer. I don’t know who those people are, so I will show you my work instead (don’t come for me, I’m joking).
In Revelation 12, we find these verses:
“Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.” Revelation 12:7-9
In Luke 10:18, Jesus says, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”
Returning to Ezekiel 28, we find:
“So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings.” Ezekiel 28:16-17
To me, the connection seems obvious. Ezekiel and Isaiah both refer to someone who has been cast down from Heaven after trying to place himself above God. In Revelation and Luke, Satan is named specifically as the creature that was cast down along with his angels; he’s also directly referred to as the serpent and as the Devil. Unless these are two very specific fallen angels with identical back stories, I think it’s safe to say that Satan is the Devil and the Devil is Lucifer (and Finkle is Einhorn).
But is Satan an evil, sun-burned goat or is he hot?
No discussion of the Devil is complete without mentioning his looks. When the topic of Lucifer comes up in most circles, Christian and secular alike, people tend to think of the stereo-typical, red 40-toned creature of lore, complete with horns and a pitchfork. Others will tell you that he was such a beautiful creature of light that even the most dedicated Christian would fall for his semblance of goodness.
The best way to approach this is to figure out how we came to see Satan as a mustache-twirling villain holding a pitchfork. The first thing to recognize is that if the Devil can’t make you stop believing in him, he can at least make himself seem ridiculous and non-threatening. I look for no deeper explanation to the cartoonization of his character than that.
But let’s go deeper, anyway.
In ancient Egyptian mythology, Set was known both as the Serpent and as the red-skinned one. In fact, red was considered to be the color of evil and of death because it was associated with barren spaces, like the red sand of the desert, both lifeless and life-taking. Set, himself, was the god of the desert, as well as the god of lightning and thunder. Maybe people connected the two beings because Satan fell like lightning from heaven, and because Jesus was tempted by the Devil for forty days in the desert (not to mention the fact that the Israelites faced temptation after temptation while wandering in the wilderness). After all, there are potential ties between Azazel and Lucifer, and the Israelites sent scapegoats out into the desert for Azazel.
But from whence came the horns? Most of my research argued that the horns came from Pan, savage deity of the wilderness. If they didn’t come from Pan, sources claimed they came from Baphomet, the goat god.
I think they came from somewhere else. I think they came from Ishtar, and Isis, and Astarte, and I think there’s a reason why in the Hebrew text of Ezekiel 28:14, the pronoun “you,” in reference to Lucifer, is feminine. But we’re out of time for today, so if you want to read more of my thoughts on this matter, tune in next time on Lorna’s Crazed Rantings, or whatever we’re calling this article.
