The morning star

After the moon, the brightest light in the night sky is the planet Venus. Because it never strays far from the sun, it is seen either in the west after sunset or in the east before dawn, shining on alone as the day begins — the “morning star”. Ancient peoples watched it closely: a Babylonian tablet records its risings and settings over some twenty years in the reign of King Ammisaduqa, in the second millennium BC, and the early Greeks took the morning star and the evening star for two different stars.

In Isaiah the king of Babylon, the subject of a “song of contempt” (Isaiah 14:4), is mocked as helel ben shachar: “O day star, son of the dawn!” (Isaiah 14:12). The Hebrew helel means “shining one”; the Septuagint renders it with the Greek for “morning star”, and the Latin Vulgate with lucifer, “light-bearer”. The KJV kept “Lucifer”, and since many church fathers also read the verse of the devil, the word became a name. In the New Testament the image is the dawn: “until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19), and “the bright Morning Star” (Revelation 22:16).