What will happen in today's elections? Will the House and/or the Senate change party hands? Will the results affect our involvement in Iraq or the presidential race in 2008? As the Chinese say, to predict is difficult, especially with regard to the future.

It's sometimes as hard to understand the past. The Bible can guide us, but we don't help matters when we add ideas to God's word. For instance, "God helps those who help themselves" is nearly everyone's favorite Bible verse. Except that it's not in the Bible. Benjamin Franklin made up the proverb, and as brilliant and vain as he could be, even he never claimed biblical authority for himself.

Where did Satan come from? The following passage in Isaiah 14 answers the question. Except that it doesn't. Here's the text:

How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! / You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! / You said in your heart, "I will ascend to heaven; / I will raise my throne above the stars of God; / I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. / I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High." / But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit (Isaiah 14:12-15).

The key phrase is "O morning star" (v. 12). The Hebrew word is HLL, variously rendered Hillel or Haylel by interpreters. Since the word appears only here in all the Hebrew Old Testament, understanding its meaning is a bit of a challenge. The Jewish scholars who translated the Old Testament into Greek (creating the "Septuagint," the Bible of most early Christians) rendered the word "morning star" (cf. 2 Peter 1:19, where the same Greek phrase is used).

Apparently few if any scholars related the phrase to Satan, for reasons we'll explain tomorrow. But then Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, creating the Vulgate, the "authorized version" of the Catholic church (ca. AD 400). He rendered HLL by "Lucifer," a word meaning "light giver" or "light bearer." When Milton wrote Paradise Lost, he identified this title with Satan, and the text in Isaiah 14 with his fall. The result was the conventional wisdom that the passage we've read today answers the question in our title. But there's more to the story, and believe it or not, a practical principle to learn as well. Let's continue tomorrow.

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