Lucifer facts for kids

Lucifer is another name for Satan. This is because people interpret a passage in the Book of Isaiah of the Bible in a certain way. Lucifer is Latin. It is made of two parts, lux-lucis (light) and ferre (to bring). There are two mentions of Lucifer in the Latin Vulgate. is used to refer to the morning star, the planet Venus that appears at dawn: once in 2 Peter 1:19 to translate the Greek word "Φωσφόρος" (Phosphoros), which has exactly the same literal meaning of "Light-Bringer" that "Lucifer" has in Latin; and once in Isaiah 14:12 to translate "הילל" (Hêlēl), which also means "Morning Star".

Latin name for the Morning Star

A 2nd-century sculpture of the moon goddess Selene accompanied by Hesperus and Phosphorus: the corresponding Latin names are Luna, Vesper and Lucifer.

Lucifer is the Latin name for the "Morning Star", both in prose and poetry, as seen in works by Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC), Cicero (106-43 BC) and other early Latin writers

Cicero wrote:

Stella Veneris, quae Φωσφόρος Graece, Latine dicitur Lucifer, cum antegreditur solem, cum subsequitur autem Hesperos

The star of Venus, called Φωσφόρος in Greek and Lucifer in Latin when it precedes, Hesperos when it follows the sun.

And Pliny the Elder:

sidus appellatum Veneris … ante matutinum exoriens Luciferi nomen accipit … contra ab occasu refulgens nuncupatur Vesper

The star called Venus … when it rises in the morning is given the name Lucifer … but when it shines at sunset it is called Vesper

Poets also used the word "Lucifer". Ovid has at least eleven mentions of the Morning Star in his poetry. Virgil wrote:

Luciferi primo cum sidere frigida rura

carpamus, dum mane novum, dum gramina canent

Let us hasten, when first the Morning Star appears,

To the cool pastures, while the day is new, while the grass is dewy

And Statius:

et iam Mygdoniis elata cubilibus alto

impulerat caelo gelidas Aurora tenebras,

rorantes excussa comas multumque sequenti

sole rubens; illi roseus per nubila seras

aduertit flammas alienumque aethera tardo

Lucifer exit equo, donec pater igneus orbem

impleat atque ipsi radios uetet esse sorori

And now Aurora rising from her Mygdonian couch had driven the cold darkness on from high in the heavens, shaking out her dewy hair, her face blushing red at the pursuing sun – from him roseate Lucifer averts his fires lingering in the clouds and with reluctant horse leaves the heavens no longer his, until the blazing father make full his orb and forbid even his sister her beams

Lucifer as Devil character of the Bible

Lucifer is the epitome of evil in the Christian religion. Lucifer is believed by some to be Satan's name when he was still an angel, but it is Latin for 'light bringer' and not originally in the Bible. The word Lucifer was also used in Latin to mean the "morningstar", the planet Venus, and this word was used in the Latin version of Isaiah 14, where the Hebrew version was speaking to a king of Babylonia.

Images for kids

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  Planet Venus in alignment with Mercury (above) and the Moon (below)

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  Illustration of Lucifer in the first fully illustrated print edition of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Woodcut for Inferno, canto 33. Pietro di Piasi, Venice, 1491.

See also

In Spanish: Lucifer para niños