Translation choice · documented · Afterlife
What the source reads — helel ben shachar — 'shining one, son of the dawn': the morning star (Venus), in a taunt against the king of Babylon (14:4)
What this version reads — 'Lucifer' — the Vulgate turns the epithet into a proper name, read ever after as Satan's own name and his fall from heaven
Isaiah is mocking a dead king — 'how you have fallen, O Morning Star' — Venus at dawn, an image of vanished glory. The Vulgate rendered the Hebrew with the Latin name 'Lucifer' (light-bearer), the KJV kept it, and the church read a Babylonian tyrant as the devil, complete with a fall from heaven the passage never mentions. The morning star made Satan. The strange sequel: 'the bright and morning star' is Christ's own title too (Revelation 22:16) — the same dawn image resting on the fallen one and the risen one at once. Diodati and the Riveduta both refused the Latin name — 'stella mattutina'.
Read this chapter side by side — Isaiah 14:12 →