How art thou fallen from heaven - A new image is presented here. It is that of the bright morning star; and a comparison of the once magnificent monarch with that beautiful star. He is now exhibited as having fallen from his place in the east to the earth. His glory is dimmed; his brightness quenched. Nothing can be more poetic and beautiful than a comparison of a magnificent monarch with the bright morning star! Nothing more striking in representing his death, than the idea of that star falling to the earth!
Lucifer - Margin, ‘Day-star’ (הילל hēylēl, from הלל hâlal, “to shine”). The word in Hebrew occurs as a noun nowhere else. In two other places Ezekiel 21:12; Zechariah 11:2, it is used as a verb in the imperative mood of Hiphil, and is translated ‘howl’ from the verb ילל yālal, “to howl” or “cry.” Gesenius and Rosenmuller suppose that it should be so rendered here. So Noyes renders it, ‘Howl, son of the morning!’ But the common translation seems to be preferable. The Septuagint renders it, Ἑωσφόρος Heōsphoros, and the Vulgate, ‘Lucifer, the morning star.’ The Chaldee, ‘How art thou fallen from high, who wert splendid among the sons of men.’ There can be no doubt that the object in the eve of the prophet was the bright morning star; and his design was to compare this magnificent oriental monarch with that. The comparison of a monarch with the sun, or the other heavenly bodies, is common in the Scriptures.
Son of the morning - This is a Hebraism (see the note at Matthew 1:1), and signifies that that bright star is, as it were, the production, or the offspring of morning; or that it belongs to the morning. The word ‘son’ often thus denotes possession, or that one thing belongs to another. The same star in one place represents the Son of God himself; Revelation 21:16 : ‘I am - the bright and morning star.’
Which didst weaken the nations - By thy oppressions and exactions, rendering once mighty nations feeble.