Was Satan Once a Beautiful Angel Named Lucifer? 1 The most popular belief about Satan's fall is based on Isaiah 14:12 (KJV): “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer son of the morning!” The passage goes on to say that Lucifer tried to raise his throne above the stars and become like the Most High, but God cast him down to the depths of the pit (Is 14:13-15). This passage is often compared with Ezekiel 28:11-19, which allegedly speaks of Lucifer as the king of Tyre living in the Garden of Eden. He was a beautiful cherub angel, but God said to him, “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” (28:17). Some even claim that Lucifer was the choir director of heaven based on the names of instruments listed in the King James translation of Ezekiel 28:13. Hence popular theory has it that Satan, as Lucifer, fell sometime at the beginning of creation. The Bible, however, never directly affirms anywhere that Satan is Lucifer. A contextual reading of Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 raises serious doubts about the reliability of the popular “Lucifer is Satan” theory. The king of Tyre is a man who acts like a god (Ezek 28). There is no good reason to equate Ezekiel's king of Tyre with either Satan or Lucifer. In fact, it makes no sense at all when we read that the Lord (through Ezekiel) denounces the king of Tyre: “You are a man and not a god” (Ezek 28:2). Satan is neither a man nor a god, but the leader of fallen angels (Mt 25:41; Rev 12:7-9). Furthermore, if this passage depicts the original fall, when did Satan get thrown to earth and turned to ashes before the kings (28:17-18)? Ezekiel 28 obviously depicts what it claims to depict—the king of Tyre. Ezekiel (25— 32) denounces various ancient nations and their kings, including Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia and Egypt. Tyre is but one of the nations on which Ezekiel prophesies judgment. Ezekiel (26—28) seems to employ hyperbolic and sarcastic language against the king, who represents his city of Tyre (28:4-5,13, 15, 18; compare with the hyperbole in Ezek 31, esp. vv. 8-9). The king, as a metonymy for the city, is portrayed with great beauty and glory due to the city's wealth, trade and accumulation of precious stones. Ezekiel thus sarcastically alludes to the king as living in the best of circumstances and beauty: as a cherub angel living in God's presence and as Adam in the delightful Garden of Eden (28:13-15). This makes his downfall even more vivid—his city is reduced to a heap of ashes (v. 18). God faults the king not only for pride but also for dishonest trade (v. 18). This would hardly be true of Lucifer or Satan. Some recognize that this passage refers to a human king while maintaining that in a deeper sense it depicts the origin of Satan because of the Garden of Eden imagery and the idea of a glorious angel gone bad. 2 However, the king's blamelessness prior to his sin (Ezek 28:15) might not be an allusion to the cherub's original state of purity but, as many scholars note, to Adam's (Ezek 28:15; 28:13; compare Gen 2). 3 Yet even if we concede the possibility that this passage implies the fall of Satan, how would we determine what verses and words suggest the fall of Satan without becoming arbitrary in our selection? In any case, the text 1 This excerpt originally appeared as Question 41 in B. J. Oropeza, 99 Answers to Angels, Demons, and Spiritual Warfare (Downers Grove: IVP, 1997). Now available as a Kindle/down loadable version (www.amazon.com).