Isaiah 14:12-15

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!

-The Jews address him again as a fallen once-bright star. The language is so framed as to apply to the Babylonian king primarily, and at the same time to shallow forth, through him, the great final enemy, the man of sin of Paul, the Antichrist of John, and the little horn and blasphemous self-willed king of Daniel. He alone shall fulfill exhaustively all the lineaments here given.

Verse 12. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer - day- star. A title truly belonging to Christ: Revelation 22:16, "the bright and morning star," and therefore hereafter to be assumed by Antichrist, of whom Babylon is a type; also applied to the angelic "sons of God," "the morning stars" (Job 38:7). Gesenius, however, renders the Hebrew [ heeyleel (H1966), imperative Hiphil of yaalal (H3213)], here as in Ezekiel 21:12; Zechariah 11:2, "howl." So Syriac. But the Septuagint, Vulgate, Chaldaic, and Arabic, as the English version (from the Hebrew, haalal (H1984), to shine), which is preferable because of the parallelism. The fall of Babylon as a self-idolizing power, the type of mystical Babylon in the Apocalypse (Revelation 17:4), before the providence of God, is described in language drawn from the fall of Satan himself, the spirit that energized the pagan world-power, and now energizes the apostate Church, and shall hereafter energize the last secular Antichrist. Thus Lucifer has naturally come to be applied to Satan (Luke 10:18; Revelation 12:8; Jude 1:6).

(How) art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken - prostrate. (How) art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken - prostrate.

The nations - as in Exodus 17:13, "discomfit (defeat);" Hebrew, chaalash (H2522).

Verse 13. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. In Daniel 8:10, "stars" express earthly civil and religious potentates. "The stars" are often also used to express heavenly principalities (Job 38:7).

I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation - the place of solemn meeting between God and His people, in the temple on Mount Zion at Jerusalem. In Daniel 11:37 ("Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god, because he shall magnify himself above all") and 2 Thessalonians 2:4 ("Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God") this is attributed to Antichrist.

In the sides of the north - namely, the sides of Mount Moriah, on which the temple was built; north of Mount Zion (Psalms 48:2). However, the parallelism supports the notion that the Babylonian king expresses himself according to his own, and not Jewish opinions (so in Isaiah 10:10); thus, "mount of the congregation" will mean the northern mountain (perhaps in Armenia) fabled by the Babylonians to be the common meeting-place of their gods. "Both sides" (Hebrew, yarkªthayim (H3411)) imply the angle in which the sides meet, and so the expression comes to mean 'the extreme parts of the north.' So the Hindus place the Meru, the dwelling-place of their gods, in the north, in the Himalayan mountains. So the Greeks, in the northern Olympus. The Persian followers of Zoroaster put the Al-bordsch in the Caucasus north of them. The allusion to "the stars" harmonizes with this-namely, those near the North Pole, the region of the brilliant aurora borealis: whence the Northern regions were regarded as the seat of special manifestations of the divine glory (cf. note, Job 23:9; Job 37:22). Maurer and the Septuagint, 'I will sit upon the lofty mountains to the north;' Syriac. The Chaldaic paraphrases, 'I will set the throne of my kingdom above the people of God, and will sit in the mount of the covenant in the bounds of the north.'

Verse 14. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds - Hebrew, the cloud, singular. Perhaps there is a reference to the cloud, the symbol of the divine presence (Isaiah 4:5; Exodus 13:21). So this tallies with 2 Thessalonians 2:4, "above all that is called God:" as here, "above ... the cloud:" and as the Shekinah-cloud was connected with the temple, there follows, "he as God sitteth in the temple of God," answering to "I will be like the Most High" here.

Verse 15. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell - to Sheol (Isaiah 14:6): thou who hast said, "I will ascend into heaven" (Matthew 11:23).

To the sides of the pit - antithetical to the "sides of the North" (Isaiah 14:13). Thus, the reference is to the sides of the sepulchre, round which the dead were ranged in niches. But Maurer here, as in Isaiah 14:13, translates, 'the extreme,' or innermost parts of the sepulchre; as in Ezra 32:23 (cf. 1 Samuel 24:3).