One of the more fascinating questions about Satan in the Bible is what happened before the events of Genesis 3, when Satan tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden.  There have been a lot of speculations about this, but the Bible only provides a couple of discussions of this, and both are done in a curious way, in insets in prophetic passages later on.  The first of these is in Isaiah 14, where in the midst of giving a judgment on Babylon, the prophet Isaiah steps back to talk about Satan’s behavior as well.  Isaiah 14:12-21 tells us:  “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!  How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations!  For you have said in your heart:  ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’  Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit.  Those who see you will gaze at you, and consider you, saying:  ‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world as a wilderness and destroyed its cities, who did not open the house of his prisoners?’  All the kings of the nations, all of them, sleep in glory, everyone in his own house; but you are cast out of your grave like an abominable branch, like the garment of those who are slain, thrust through with a sword, who go down to the stones of the pit, like a corpse trodden underfoot.  You will not be joined with them in burial, because you have destroyed your land and slain your people.  The brood of evildoers shall never be named.  Prepare slaughter for his children because of the iniquity of their fathers, lest they rise up and possess the land, and fill the face of the world with cities.”

There are at least a few notable aspects of this particular prophecy as they relate to Satan and it is worth discussing these issues at least briefly, as they will reappear later on.  For one, let us first note that this passage refers to Satan by a variety of titular names, one of which has been confused for a personal name.  This judgment of Satan is under the King of Babylon, with the implication that Satan is the overall ruler of the Babylonian religious/political system that receives so much condemnation in the Bible, an angle that many writers have taken and run with to look at everything involved with Babylon as something that reveals the approach of Satan.  Within this passage there is another title that is given to Satan, “Day Star,” which when translated into Latin becomes Lucifer (“light bringer”) and gives Satan one of his characteristic names which people do not realize is a title (like Satan is), and view instead as a personal name.  This is a mistake, but certainly a mistake that is easy to understand.

The next most obvious aspect of this passage is the way that it discusses Satan’s desire to view himself as god and in the place of God.  We see this particular tendency in many human governments, where either the state itself or authorities (like Pharaohs and emperors and kings) view themselves as being divine or semi-divine and show hostility to God’s ways being viewed as superior to their own laws.  Satan’s desire for worship accounts for a great deal of the lure of idolatry as well as the rebelliousness against God’s ways that takes place in this world, especially among people in high places.  Also, it should be noted that the pride that is shown by Satan regarding his position demonstrates one of the characteristic ways by which people (and demons) become consumed by sin.

There is at least one additional element of this passage that deserves a brief discussion.  This passage discusses Satan’s fate as being in the deepest and darkest places of the pit and states that the rulers of the world will have far more glory than that of Satan.  This is notable for several reasons.  For one, it suggests that Satan’s fate will involve the grave and destruction, a hint that we see in Ezekiel 28 (see below) and one that provides an entrance into the discussion of the fate of Satan and the demons, a subject that the Bible only deals with occasionally but in very interesting fashion.  The fact that this passage spends so much time contrasting the fate of Satan and that of fallen human rulers suggests that Isaiah was very interested in providing encouragement to human rulers who might have been thought of as faring very badly.

In addition, although this is a somewhat peripheral point, this passage’s harsh condemnation of Babylon suggests that Isaiah was particularly critical of the attempts of the contemporary King Hezekiah to ally with Babylon in an anti-Assyrian alliance.  It can be very tempting to think of the enemy of our enemy as a friend, only to fail to realize that the enemy of our enemy can be our next enemy, as was the case with Judah when it came both to Egypt as well as Babylon.  This would have fateful consequences for Judah when it came to its rapid destruction after the death of Josiah.  That said, it has little to do with Satan in the Bible, so that is a subject to more fully discuss another time.