The Fall of Satan: What Scripture Testifies

The fall of Satan and of the angels who followed him is attested in several places in Scripture, quite apart from the name “son of God.”

On its surface, Ezekiel 28 is a lament over the proud king of Tyre, yet beyond him it portrays a glorious cherub who was on the holy mountain of God and in Eden. The king of Tyre was a man, yet the text says to him, “In Eden, the garden of God, you were” (Ezekiel 28:13), and “You were the anointed covering cherub” (Ezekiel 28:14). Such words cannot belong to a human king alone. They show that Ezekiel’s lament looks past the human ruler to the spiritual reality at work behind him.

Ezekiel 28:12-15 Son of man (adam), take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him: Thus says the Lord GOD: You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. In Eden, the garden of God, you were; every precious stone was your covering — the carnelian, the topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the turquoise, and the emerald, and gold; the workmanship of your settings and your sockets was in you; in the day you were created they were prepared. You were the anointed covering cherub; and I set you, so that you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. Perfect were you in your ways from the day you were created, until unrighteousness was found in you.

Ezekiel 28:17 Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom because of your brightness; I cast you to the ground, I laid you before kings, that they might gaze upon you.

“From the day you were created” (Ezekiel 28:15; compare “in the day you were created,” Ezekiel 28:13). He was not a son begotten of God but a created being, a cherub. Revelation calls him “the great dragon,” “the ancient serpent, the one called the devil and Satan” (Revelation 12:9). In this way Scripture connects him with the serpent that deceived the woman in Eden.

Isaiah 14:12 How you have fallen from heaven, the howling, son of the dawn! You are cut down to the earth, you who laid low the nations!

Isaiah 14:15 But you are brought down to Sheol, to the uttermost parts of the pit.

In the Hebrew text, the word the YLV renders “the howling” is written with exactly the same consonants and vowel points as the word “Wail” in Zechariah 11:2: “Wail, O cypress” (Zechariah 11:2). There it is the command form of the verb yalal, “to wail.” Many lexicons and scholars derive the word instead from halal, “to shine,” and following the Septuagint (heosphoros, “morning star”) and the Latin Vulgate (lucifer, “light-bearer”), translate it “shining one” or “day star.” Yet where this exact form actually occurs elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (Zechariah 11:2), its meaning is not light but wailing. We follow the actual usage within Scripture.

• Yeshua Himself said, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning” (Luke 10:18).
• “And war occurred in heaven — Michael and his angels waged war against the dragon … and no place was found for them any longer in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down — the ancient serpent … and his angels were thrown down with him” (Revelation 12:7-9).
• “the angels who did not keep their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling, He has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day” (Jude 1:6), and “God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into Tartaros and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness” (2 Peter 2:4).

From the ancient serpent of Genesis 3 to the spirit behind Babylon and the spirit behind Tyre, this fallen spirit stands behind the powers that have opposed Israel and the holy ones throughout history. Yet one truth must not be forgotten. Even these evil spirits are only instruments in the hand of the sovereign God, who is leading history Himself toward the final completion of creation, separating the wheat from the chaff and refining His people like gold.

From the beginning, angels have been ministering spirits.

Hebrews 1:14 Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out to serve on behalf of those who are about to inherit Salvation?

The true sons and firstborn of God are the saints redeemed by the blood of Yeshua, who have received the holy life of God as their inheritance.