The Morning Star And The Angel Of Light

Q. I have emailed you before and always appreciate your Bible based answers.

Here’s my question. The bible refers to Satan as being an angel of light in 2 Corinthians 11:14-15. And in my Nelson’s Student Bible Dictionary it refers to Lucifer as Morning Star and I believe Jesus has been referred to as the Day Star. This is all a bit confusing. First are there Angels of Light that are Angels of God and are good and still exist. Satan was one but fell because of wickedness. Is Satan also the Morning Star and is Jesus the Day Star and how is that meant?

A. In 2 Cor. 11:14 Paul said that Satan masquerades as an angel of light, not that he is one. Satan is a deceiver and that’s one of the ways he deceives us.

Lucifer is a Latin word that means “light bearer” It comes from the Latin translation of Isaiah 14:12 where Satan is called Heylel ben Shakar in Hebrew. Heylel is from a root word that means “to shine” in the sense of foolish boasting or making a show of oneself. It’s really a derrogatory term and is the origin of the title “the shining one”. Ben means “son” and shakar means “morning”. So Heylel ben Shakar means “shining one, son of the morning”.

When he translated Isaiah 14:12 into Latin, Jerome used the word Lucifer for heylel and it stuck. Somewhere along the way, son of the morning incorrectly became morning star, and to further complicate things, some translations use Day Star instead of Lucifer there. I’m not aware of any major translation where Jesus is called the Day Star. In Luke 1:78 the KJV refers to Him as the Dayspring and that might be the source of the confusion.

The real Morning Star is Jesus as Peter wrote in 2 Peter 1:19 and as Jesus Himself said in Rev. 22:16. It is confusing, but hopefully this clears everything up for you.