They came to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes.
Parallel Translations
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They came to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes.
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And they cam over to the other syde of the see in to the countre of the Gaderenites.
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And they came ouer to the other side of the sea into the countrey of the Gadarens.
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Passages linked to Mark 5:1 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Luke 8:26-39 They arrived at the country of the Gadarenes, which is opposite Galilee. When Jesus stepped ashore, a certain man out of the city who had demons for a long time met him. He wore no clothes, and didn’t live in a house, but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, “What do I have to do with you, Jesus, you Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torment me!” For Jesus was commanding the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For the unclean spirit had often seized the man. He was kept under guard, and bound with chains and fetters. Breaking the bonds apart, he was driven by the demon into the desert. Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered into him. They begged him that he would not command them to go into the abyss. Now there was there a herd of many pigs feeding on the mountain, and they begged him that he would allow them to enter into those. Then he allowed them. The demons came out of the man, and entered into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake, and were drowned. When those who fed them saw what had happened, they fled and told it in the city and in the country. People went out to see what had happened. They came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at Jesus’ feet, clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. Those who saw it told them how he who had been possessed by demons was healed. All the people of the surrounding country of the Gadarenes asked him to depart from them, for they were very much afraid. Then he entered into the boat and returned. But the man from whom the demons had gone out begged him that he might go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your house, and declare what great things God has done for you.” He went his way, proclaiming throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him.
- Matthew 8:28-34 When he came to the other side, into the country of the Gergesenes, two people possessed by demons met him there, coming out of the tombs, exceedingly fierce, so that nobody could pass that way. Behold, they cried out, saying, “What do we have to do with you, Jesus, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” Now there was a herd of many pigs feeding far away from them. The demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, permit us to go away into the herd of pigs.” He said to them, “Go!” They came out, and went into the herd of pigs: and behold, the whole herd of pigs rushed down the cliff into the sea, and died in the water. Those who fed them fled, and went away into the city, and told everything, including what happened to those who were possessed with demons. Behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus. When they saw him, they begged that he would depart from their borders.
- Mark 4:35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let’s go over to the other side.”
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Many have the virtue of Christ in admiration, and…
Many have the virtue of Christ in admiration, and yet they will not redeem it with the loss of the least thing they have.
See also Matt. 8:30.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 1 And they came over unto the other side…
1 And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes.
Ver. 1. {See Trapp on "Mat 8:28"}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain This famous piece of history hath the testimony of…
This famous piece of history hath the testimony of three evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We meeting with it in Matthew, did not only largely open what passages Matthew hath about it, but what both Mark and Luke have. See Poole on "Mat 8:28", and following verses to Mat 8:34. We shall only annex here some short notes. Interpreters judge the country of the Gergesenes, and of
the Gadarenes mentioned here, to have been the same, sometimes receiving the denomination from one city, sometimes from another in it. Why the devils are called unclean spirits, in opposition to the Holy Spirit, &c., we have formerly showed; as also why they delight to be about tombs. We have also showed his power, which (by God’s permission) he exerciseth upon men: some he possesseth, and acteth the part of the soul in them (especially as to the locomotive faculty); these are properly called demoniacs, ενεργουμενοι. Others he afflicts more as a foreign agent, offering violence to them. Others he more secretly influences, by impressions and suggestions: thus he still ordinarily worketh in the children of disobedience, Eph 2:2; nor are the people of God free from this impetus, though, being succoured by Christ, they are not so ordinarily overcome. Of the mighty power of the evil angels to break chains and fetters we need not doubt, considering that though fallen from their first righteousness, they yet have their natural power as spirits.
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I adjure thee by God, is no more than, I solemnly entreat thee; it hath not the force of, Swear unto me by God, as some would have it. Matthew mentions two (of these demoniacs); Mark and Luke but one: there were doubtless two, but probably one of them was not so raging as the other, and therefore less taken notice of. Some think one of these men was a heathen, the other a Jew:
1. Because the term legion, which the demoniac gives himself, is a heathen term, signifying a squadron of soldiers, about six thousand or more, as some reckon.
2. Christ was now in a country full of heathens.
3. The woman of whose cure we next read was a Syrophenician. It is observable, that a multitude of evil spirits is called by the name of the devil; because, though considered as individual spirits they are many, yet in their malice and mischievous designs against mankind they are as one.
Oh that the people of God were as well united in designs for his glory! Some interpreters start a question here, not very easy to be resolved, viz. What made the devils so desirous that Christ would not send them out of the country. Their answer is not improbable: That it was a paganish, ignorant, sottish place, where usually the devil hath the best markets and the greatest rule. For as it is said of Christ, that he could not do much in some places where he came because of their unbelief; so neither can the devil do much in some places, because of the faith of the gospel received by them. Hence it is observable, that as the devil is not able to play his game in any place amongst Christians, as he doth this day amongst heathens; so he hath much less power at this day in places where the word of God is more generally known, and more faithfully preached, than in other places where people are more ignorant of the Scriptures, and have less faithful and frequent preaching. In the latter he dealeth most by more inward suggestions and impressions. Our learned Dr. Lightfoot observes it probable, that this city or country was generally made up of pagans, or apostatized Jews, because they nourished so many swine, which to the Jews were unclean beasts. For other things relating to the explication of this history;
See Poole on "Mat 8:28", and following verses to Mat 8:34.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain This piece of history gives us a very sad…
This piece of history gives us a very sad relation of a person that was possessed with a legion of devils: we read of few, if any, in the Old Testament, that were thus possessed, but of many in the New Testament. Our Saviour came into the world to destroy the works of the devil; therefore he suffered Satan to enter some human bodies, to show his divine power in casting him out.
Note here, 1. That the evil angels by their fall lost their purity, but not their power; for with God’s permission they have power, not only to enter into men’s bodies, and to possess them, but also to distemper their minds, and drive them to frenzy and madness, causing them to offer violence to their own lives and to do hurt and mischief to their own bodies. Thus did this possessed person here, wounding and cutting himself with stones.
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Note, 2. That the reason why the evil angels do not oftener exert their power in doing mischief to the bodies and lives of men, is from the restraining power of God. The devils cannot do all the mischief they would, and they shall not do all they can.
Note, 3. The place where these evil spirits delighted to make their abode; among the tombs or graves, places desolate, forlorn, and solitary, which are apt to breed horror of mind, and give advantage to temptations.
Learn thence, That it is dangerous, and very unsafe, for persons, especially in whom melancholy prevails, to give themselves to solitariness, to frequent desolate and forlorn places, and to affect the being much alone; it giving advantage to Satan to set upon them with powerful temptations. It is better to frequent human society and communion of the saints, by means whereof we may be more and more strengthened and fortified against Satan’s temptations.
Note, 4. That the devils own Christ to be the Son of God, and that he came into the world to be a Saviour, but not a Saviour to them; therefore they cry out, What have we to do with thee, or thou with us? O what an uncomfortable confession and acknowledgment is this, to own Christ to be a Saviour, and at the same time to know that he is none of our Saviour!
Note, 5. That though the devils do own Christ to be the Son of God, and do pay homage and worship, and yield service and subjection to him, as his slaves and vassals, yet it is not a free and voluntary service, but extorted rather, and forced from them by the power of Christ: He worshipped, and cried out, saying, What have I to do with thee?
Note, 6. What a multitude of evil spirits do enter into one man. O the extreme malice and cruelty of the devil against mankind, in that so many evil spirits did at once afflict and torment a single person; even a legion, many thousands of them.
Observe also, The unity and agreement which is amongst these evil spirits in doing mischief: though there was a legion of them in this one person, yet they have all but one name.
Learn, That the very devils have a sort of unity amongst themselves, and in their malice and mischievous designs against mankind they are as one. How happy were it, if good men were as much united in designs and endeavours for the glory of God, as devils conspire and combine against it!
Note, 7. The outcry which the devil makes at the appearance and approach of Christ, Art thou come to torment us before the time?
From thence learn, (1) That there are tortures appointed to the spiritual natures of evil angels.
(2) That the devils are not so full of torment as they shall be. Although they are as full of discontent as they can be, there will be a time when their torments shall be increased, when they shall have their fill of torment. This they know, and accordingly thus they pray, Torment us not before our time; that is, increase not our torments before the appointed time of their increase.
Note, 8. The devil’s request, Not to send them out of the country, ver. 10: for being now among heathens, they thought they were among their own, and not in Christ’s jurisdiction, as being not amongst his people.
Next, for permission and leave to go into the herd of swine.
Where observe, First, The devil’s malice; he will hurt the poor beasts rather than not hurt at all.
Secondly, His powerful restraint; he cannot hurt a pig without permission: Suffer us to enter. Satan’s malice indeed is infinite, but his power is bounded; it is postestas sub postestate, a power under a power. If he could not hurt the swine, much less can he afflict the body or soul of man without leave or licence.
Note, 9. How Satan’s request is yielded to by our Saviour: he permits the devils to enter into the swine; not to satisfy their desire in doing mischief; but, first, to show his power over the devils, that they could do nothing without his permission: next, to show how great the power and malice of the devil would be, if not restrained: and lastly, That the miracle of casting out such a multitude of devils might appear to be the greater.
Learn hence, That sometimes Almighty God, for wise ends and just causes, doth suffer the devil to enjoy his desire in doing hurt and mischief unto the creatures: Jesus said unto them, Go.
Note, 10. What a contrary effect this miracle which Christ wrought had upon these people; instead of believing his divine power, upon the sight of his miraculous healing the possessed, the loss of their swine enrages them, and makes them desire Christ to depart from them. Carnal hearts prefer their swine before their Saviour, and had rather lose Christ’s presence than their worldly profit. So desirous were these Gadarenes to get rid of our Saviour’s company, that they pray and beseech him to depart out of their coasts.
Learn hence, Sad is the condition of such from whom Christ departs; more sad the condition of such who say unto Christ, Depart; but most sad the case of them who pray and beseech Christ to depart from them; which accordingly he did, and we read no more of his return to them.
Note lastly, How desirous the possessed man was to continue with Christ: after he was ocme to himself, he prayed that he might be with him. This he might desire, partly to testify his thankfulness to Christ, partly out of fear of being repossessed again by Satan, or perhaps to have the opportunity of hearing Christ’s doctrine,and seeing his miracles. For such as have once tasted that the Lord is gracious, and experienced the pleasure and profit of Chirst’s company, are very desirous of the continuance of it, and exceeding loth to part with it.
However, our Saviour at this time did not think fit to suffer him, knowing that more glory would redound to God, by publishing the miracle to his friends. Christ expects, after eminent deliverances wrought for us, that we should be the publishers of his praise, and declare to all, far and near, the great things which God hath done for us. Add to this, that our Saviour might not permit this man to be with him to avoid the suspicion of vain-glory; by which he might have given some umbrage, had he carried about with him those upon whom his greatest miracles were wrought.
And lastly, To show that Christ in his absence, as well as when present, is able to protect those that believe and trust in him from the malice of evil spirits.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain We have here an instance of Christ's dispossessing the…
We have here an instance of Christ's dispossessing the strong man armed, and disposing of him as he pleased, to make it appear that he was stronger than he. This he did when he was come to the other side, whither he went through a storm; his business there was to rescue this poor creature out of the hands of Satan, and when he had done that, he returned. Thus he came from heaven to earth, and returned, in a storm, to redeem a remnant of mankind out of the hands of the devil, though but a little remnant, and did not think his pains ill bestowed.
In Matthew, they were said to be two possessed with devils; here it is said to be a man possessed with an unclean spirit. If there were two, there was one, and Mark doth not say that there was but one; so that this difference cannot give us any just offence; it is probable that one of them was much more remarkable than the other, and said what was said. Now observe here,
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I. The miserable condition that this poor creature was in; he was under the power of an unclean spirit, the devil got possession of him, and the effect of it was not, as in many, a silent melancholy, but a raging frenzy; he was raving mad; his condition seems to have been worse than any of the possessed, that were Christ's patients.
1. He had his dwelling among the tombs, among the graves of dead people. Their tombs were out of the cities, in desolate places (Job 3:14); which gave the devil great advantage: for woe to him that is alone. Perhaps the devil drove him to the tombs, to make people fancy that the souls of the dead were turned into daemons, and did what mischief was done, so to excuse themselves from it. The touch of a grave was polluting, Num 19:16. The unclean spirit drives people into that company that is defiling, and so keeps possession of them. Christ, by rescuing souls out of Satan's power, saves the living from among the dead.
2. He was very strong and ungovernable; No man could bind him, as it is requisite both for their own good, and for the safety of others, that those who are distracted should be. Not only cords would not hold him, but chains and fetters of iron would not, Mar 5:3, Mar 5:4. Very deplorable is the case of such as need to be thus bound, and of all miserable people in this world they are most to be pitied; but his case was worst of all, in whom the devil was so strong, that he could not be bound. This sets forth the sad condition of those souls in which the devil has dominion; those children of disobedience, in whom that unclean spirit works. Some notoriously wilful sinners are like this madman; all are herein like the horse and the mule, that they need to be held in with bit and bridle; but some are like the wild ass, that will not be so held. The commands and curses of the law are as chains and fetters, to restrain sinners from their wicked courses; but they break those bands in sunder, and it is an evidence of the power of the devil in them.
3. He was a terror and torment to himself and to all about him, Mar 5:5. The devil is a cruel master to those that are led captive by him, a perfect tyrant; this wretched creature was night and day in the mountains and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones, either bemoaning his own deplorable case, or in a rage and indignation against heaven. Men in frenzies often wound and destroy themselves; what is a man, when reason is dethroned and Satan enthroned? The worshippers of Baal in their fury cut themselves, like this madman in his. The voice of God is, Do thyself no harm; the voice of Satan is, Do thyself all the harm thou canst; yet God's word is despised, and Satan's regarded. Perhaps his cutting himself with stones was only cutting his feet with the sharp stones he ran barefoot upon.
II. His application to Christ (Mar 5:6); When he saw Jesus afar off, coming ashore, he ran, and worshipped him. He usually ran upon others with rage, but he ran to Christ with reverence. That was done by an invisible hand of Christ, which could not be done with chains and fetters; his fury was all on a sudden curbed. Even the devil, in this poor creature, was forced to tremble before Christ, and bow to him: or, rather, the poor man came, and worshipped Christ, in a sense of the need he had of his help, the power of Satan in and over him being, for this instant, suspended.
III. The word of command Christ gave to the unclean spirit, to quit his possession (Mar 5:8); Come out of him, thou unclean spirit. He made the man desirous to be relieved, when he enabled him to run, and worship him, and then put forth his power for his relief. If Christ work in us heartily to pray for a deliverance from Satan, he will work for us that deliverance. Here is an instance of the power and authority with which Christ commanded the unclean spirits, and they obeyed him, Mar 1:27. He said, Come out of the man. The design of Christ's gospel is to expel unclean spirits out of the souls of people; "Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit, that the Holy Spirit may enter, may take possession of the heart, and have dominion in it."
IV. The dread which the devil had of Christ. The man ran, and worshipped Christ; but it was the devil in the man, that cried with a loud voice (making use of the poor man's tongue), What have I to do with thee? Mar 5:7. Just as that other unclean spirit, Mar 1:24. 1. He calls God the most high God, above all other gods. By the name Elion - the Most High, God was known among the Phoenicians, and the other nations that bordered upon Israel; and by that name the devil calls him. 2. He owns Jesus to be the Son of God. Note, It is no strange thing to hear the best words drop from the worst mouths. There is such a way of saying this as none can attain to but by the Holy Ghost (Co1 12:3); yet it may be said, after a sort, by the unclean spirit. There is no judging of men by their loose sayings; but by their fruits ye shall know them. Piety from the teeth outward is an easy thing. The most fair-spoken hypocrite cannot say better than to call Jesus the Son of God, and yet that the devil did. 3. He disowns any design against Christ; "What have I to do with thee? I have no need of thee, I pretend to none; I desire to have nothing to do with thee; I cannot stand before thee, and would not fall." 4. He deprecates his wrath; I adjure thee, that is, "I earnestly beseech thee, by all that is sacred, I beg of thee for God's sake, by whose permission I have got possession of this man, that, though thou drive me out hence, yet that thou torment me not, that thou do not restrain me from doing mischief somewhere else; though I know I am sentenced, yet let me not be sent to the chains of darkness, or hindered from going to and fro, to devour."
V. The account Christ took from this unclean spirit of his name. This we had not in Matthew. Christ asked him, What is thy name? Not but that Christ could call all the fallen stars, as well as the morning stars, by their names; but he demands this, that the standers by might be affected with the vast numbers and power of those malignant infernal spirits, as they had reason to be, when the answer was, My name is Legion, for we are many; a legion of soldiers among the Romans consisted, some say, of six thousand men, others of twelve thousand and five hundred; but the number of a legion with them, like that of a regiment with us, was not always the same. Now this intimates that the devils, the infernal powers, are, 1. Military powers; a legion is a number of soldiers in arms. The devils war against God and his glory, Christ and his gospel, men and their holiness and happiness. They are such as we are to resist and wrestle against, Eph 6:12. 2. That they are numerous; he owns, or rather he boasts - We are many; as if he hoped to be too many for Christ himself to deal with. What multitudes of apostate spirits were there, and all enemies to God and man; when here were a legion posted to keep garrison in one poor wretched creature against Christ! Many there are that rise up against us. 3. That they are unanimous; they are many devils, and yet but one legion engaged in the same wicked cause; and therefore that cavil of the Pharisees, which supposed Satan to cast out Satan, and to be divided against himself, was altogether groundless. It was not one of this legion that betrayed the rest, for they all said, as one man, What have I to do with thee? 4. That they are very powerful; Who can stand before a legion? We are not a match for our spiritual enemies, in our own strength; but in the Lord, and in the power of his might, we shall be able to stand against them, though there are legions of them. 5. That there is order among them, as there is in a legion; there are principalities, and powers, and rulers of the darkness of this world, which supposes that there are those of a lower rank; the devil and his angels; the dragon and his; the prince of the devils and his subjects: which makes those enemies the more formidable.
VI. The request of this legion, that Christ would suffer them to go into a herd of swine that was feeding nigh unto the mountains (Mar 5:11), those mountains which the demoniacs haunted, Mar 5:5. Their request was, 1. That he would not send them away out of the country (Mar 5:10); not only that he would not commit them, or confine them, to their infernal prison, and so torment them before the time; but that he would not banish them that country, as justly he might, because in this poor man they had been such a terror to it, and done so much mischief. They seem to have had a particular affection for that country; or, rather, a particular spite to it; and to have liberty to walk to and fro through the rest of the earth, will not serve (Job 1:7), unless the range of those mountains be allowed them for their pasture, Job 39:8. But why would they abide in that country? Grotius saith, Because in that country there were many apostate Jews, who had thrown themselves out of the covenant of God, and had thereby given Satan power over them. And some suggest, that, having by experience got the knowledge of the dispositions and manners of the people of that country, they could the more effectually do them mischief by their temptations. 2. That he would suffer them to enter into the swine, by destroying which they hoped to do more mischief to the souls of all the people in the country, than they could by entering into the body of any particular person, which therefore they did not ask leave to do, for they knew Christ would not grant it.
VII. The permission Christ gave them to enter into the swine, and the immediate destruction of the swine thereby; He gave them leave (Mar 5:13), he did not forbid or restrain them, he let them do as they had a mind. Thus he would let the Gadarenes see what powerful spiteful enemies devils are, that they might thereby be induced to make him their Friend, who alone was able to control and conquer them, and had made it appear that he was so. Immediately the unclean spirits entered into the swine, which by the law were unclean creatures, and naturally love to wallow in the mire, the fittest place for them. Those that, like the swine, delight in the mire of sensual lusts, are fit habitations for Satan, and are, like Babylon, the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird (Rev 18:2), as pure souls are habitations of the Holy Spirit. The consequence of the devils entering into the swine, was, that they all ran mad presently, and ran headlong into the adjoining sea, where they were all drowned, to the number of two thousand. The man they possessed did only cut himself, for God had said, He is in your hands, only save his life. But thereby it appeared, that, if he had not been so restrained, the poor man would have drowned himself. See how much we are indebted to the providence of God, and the ministration of good angels, for our preservation from malignant spirits.
VIII. The report of all this dispersed through the country immediately. They that fed the swine, hastened to the owners, to give an account of their charge, Mar 5:14. This drew the people together, to see what was done: and, 1. When they saw how wonderfully the poor man was cured, they hence conceived a veneration for Christ, Mar 5:15. They saw him that was possessed with the devil, and knew him well enough, by the same token that they had many a time been frightened at the sight of him; and were now as much surprised to see him sitting clothed and in his right mind; when Satan was cast out, he came to himself, and was his own man presently. Note, Those who are grave and sober, and live by rule and with consideration, thereby make it appear that by the power of Christ the devil's power is broken in their souls. The sight of this made them afraid; it astonished them, and forced them to own the power of Christ, and that he is worthy to be feared. But, 2. When they found that their swine were lost, they thence conceived a dislike of Christ, and wished to have rather his room than his company; they prayed him to depart out of their coasts, for they think not any good he can do them sufficient to make them amends for the loss of so many swine, fat swine, it may be, and ready for the market. Now the devils had what they would have; for by no handle do these evil spirits more effectually manage sinful souls than by that of the love of the world. They were afraid of some further punishment, if Christ should tarry among them, whereas, if they would but part with their sins, he had life and happiness for them; but, being loth to quit either their sins or their swine, they chose rather to abandon their Saviour. Thus they do, who, rather than let go a base lust, will throw away their interest in Christ, and their expectations from him. They should rather have argued, "If he has such a power as this over devils and all creatures, it is good having him our Friend; if the devils have leave to tarry in our country (Mar 5:10), let us entreat him to tarry in it too, who alone can control them." But, instead of this, they wished him further off. Such strange misconstructions do carnal hearts make of the just judgments of God; instead of being by them driven to him as they ought, they set him at so much the greater distance; though he hath said, Provoke me not, and I will do you no hurt, Jer 25:6.
IX. An account of the conduct of the poor man after his deliverance. 1. He desired that he might go along with Christ (Mar 5:18), perhaps for fear lest the evil spirit should again seize him; or, rather, that he might receive instruction from him, being unwilling to stay among those heathenish people that desired him to depart. Those that are freed from the evil spirit, cannot but covet acquaintance and fellowship with Christ. 2. Christ would not suffer him to go with him, lest it should savour of ostentation, and to let him know that he could both protect and instruct him at a distance. And besides, he had other work for him to do; he must go home to his friends, and tell them what great things the Lord had done for him, the Lord Jesus had done; that Christ might be honoured, and his neighbours and friends might be edified, and invited to believe in Christ. He must take particular notice rather of Christ's pity than of his power, for that is it which especially he glories in; he must tell them what compassion the Lord had had on him in his misery. 3. The man, in a transport of joy, proclaimed, all the country over, what great things Jesus had done for him, Mar 5:20. This is a debt we owe both to Christ and to our brethren, that he may be glorified and they edified. And see what was the effect of it; All men did marvel, but few went any further. Many that cannot but wonder at the works of Christ, yet do not, as they ought, wonder after him.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Matt. viii, 28; Luke viii, 26.
Matt. viii, 28; Luke viii, 26.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain The man possessed with a legion of demons cured,…
CHAPTER V.
The man possessed with a legion of demons cured, 1-20.
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He raises Jairus's daughter to life, and cures the woman who
had an issue of blood, 21-43.
NOTES ON CHAP. V.
Verse 1. The Gadarenes.] Some of the MSS. have Gergasenes, and some of them Gerasenes. Griesbach seems to prefer the latter. See Clarke on Mt 8:28.
The Gadarenes were included within the limits of the Gergasenes. Dr. Lightfoot supposes that, of the two demoniacs mentioned here, one was of Gadara, and consequently a heathen, the other was a Gergesenian, and consequently a Jew; and he thinks that Mark and Luke mention the Gadarene demoniac because his case was a singular one, being the only heathen cured by our Lord, except the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Mar 5:1-17. They came into the country of the…
Mar 5:1-17. They came into the country of the Gadarenes — Called Gergesenes, Mat 8:28. Gadara and Gergasa being towns near each other, and their inhabitants, and those of the country adjacent, taking their name indifferently from either. There met him a man with an unclean spirit — Matthew mentions two. Probably this, so particularly spoken of here, was the most remarkably fierce and ungovernable. This whole story is explained at large, Mat 8:28-34. My name is Legion, for we are many — But all these seem to have been under one commander, who accordingly speaks, all along, both for them and for himself. They that fed the swine fled, and told it in the city — The miracle, issuing in the destruction of the swine, was immediately reported in the town and country by the affrighted keepers, who as they fled had fallen in, it seems, with Jesus and his company, and learned from them the cause of what had happened. And they went out to see what was done — Thus the whole people had ocular demonstration of the power of Jesus, and were rendered inexcusable in not believing on him; and they see him that was possessed of the devil sitting — At the feet of Jesus, to receive his instructions; and clothed — With the raiment that had been given him; and in his right mind — Perfectly composed and restored to the use of his reason; and they were afraid — Instead of rejoicing that a human being was delivered from so great an evil as had long afflicted him, they were thrown into the utmost consternation, and, being conscious of their wickedness, dreaded the further effects of Christ’s power, which, probably, if they had not done, they would have offered some rudeness, if not violence, to him.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain See this account of the demoniacs fully explained in…
See this account of the demoniacs fully explained in the notes at Mat 8:28-34.
Mar 5:4
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He had been often bound with fetters and chains - Efforts had been made to confine him, but his great strength - his strength increased by his malady - had prevented it. There often appears to be a great increase of strength produced by insanity, and what is here stated in regard to this maniac often occurs in Palestine and elsewhere now. Dr. Thomson (“The Land and the Book,” vol. i. p. 213) says respecting this case: “There are some very similar at the present day - furious and dangerous maniacs, who wander about the mountains, and sleep in tombs and caves. In their worst paroxysms they are quite unmanageable and prodigiously strong.” Luk 8:27 says of him that “he were no clothes,” or that he was naked, which is also implied in the account in Mark, who tells us that after he was healed he was found “clothed and in his right mind,” Mar 4:15. This is often a striking characteristic of insanity. Dr. Pritchard (on “Insanity,” p. 26) quotes from an Italian physician’s description of raving madness or mania: “A striking and characteristic circumstance is the propensity to go quite naked. The patient tears his clothes to tatters.” So Dr. Thomson (“The Land and the Book,” vol. i. p. 213) says: “It is one of the most common traits in this madness that the victims refuse to wear clothes. I have often seen them absolutely naked in the crowded streets of Beirut and Sidon. There are also cases in which they run wildly about the country and frighten the whole neighborhood. These poor wretches are held in the greatest reverence by Muslims, who, through some monstrous perversion of ideas, believe them to be inspired and peculiarly holy.”
Mar 5:5
Cutting himself with stones - These are all marks of a madman - a man bereft of reason, a wretched outcast, strong and dangerous. The inspired penman says that this madness was caused by an unclean spirit, or by his being under the influence of a devil. That this account is not irrational, see the notes at Mat 4:24.
Mar 5:6
Worshipped him - Bowed down before him; rendered him homage. This was an acknowledgment of his power, and of his control over fallen spirits.
Mar 5:9
My name is Legion - See the notes at Mat 8:29.
Mar 5:15
Sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind - There could be no doubt of the reality of this miracle. The man had been well known. He had long dwelt among the tombs, an object of terror and alarm. To see him all at once peaceful, calm, and rational, was proof that it was the power of God only that had done it.
They were afraid - They were awed, as in the presence of God. The word does not mean here that they feared that any evil would happen to them, but that they were affected with awe; they felt that God was there; they were struck with astonishment at what Jesus had done.
Mar 5:19
Jesus suffered him not - Various reasons have been conjectured why Jesus did not suffer this man to go with him. It might have been that he wished to leave him among the people as a conclusive evidence of his power to work miracles. Or it might have been that the man feared that if Jesus left him the devils would return, and that Jesus told him to remain to show to him that the cure was complete, and that he had power over the devils when absent as well as when present. But the probable reason is, that he desired to restore him to his family and friends. Jesus was unwilling to delay the joy of his friends, and to prolong their anxiety by suffering him to remain away from them.
Mar 5:20
In Decapolis - See the notes at Mat 4:25.
How great things ... - This was the natural expression of right feeling at being cured of such a calamity. So the desire of sinners freed from sin is to honor Jesus, and to invite the world to participate in the same salvation, and to join them in doing honor to the Son of God. Compare Psa 66:16.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Nelson Darby 1862 · Public Domain Mark Chapter 5
Mark Chapter 5
But, in another sense, they are not with Him. They are called to serve, when He quits the scene of His labour. We learn this from the demoniac Legion (chap. 5), delivered from his miserable condition. Man-and Israel in particular-was completely under the power of the enemy. Christ, as to the work of His power, completely delivered the one in whose behalf this power was exercised. He is clothed-not naked-in his right mind, and sitting at the feet of Jesus to hear His words. But the people of the place are afraid, and send Jesus away-what the world has done with Christ; and in the history of the herd of swine we have the picture of Israel after the remnant has been healed. They are unclean, and Satan drives them to destruction. Now, when Jesus departs, he who had personally experienced the mighty effects of His love would have liked to be with Him; but he was to go home and bear testimony to those around him of all that Jesus had done. He was to serve in the absence of Jesus. In all these narratives we see the work and the devotedness of the Servant, but at the same time the divine power of Jesus manifested in this service.
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In the circumstances that follow the cure of the demoniac, we find the true position of Jesus portrayed in His work. He is called upon to heal the daughter of Jairus-even as He came to heal the Jews, had that been possible. As He went toward the house of Jairus to perform this work, a poor incurable woman touches the hem of His garment with faith, and is instantly healed. This was the case with Jesus during His passage among the Jews. In the multitude that surrounded Him, some souls through grace touched Him by faith. In truth, their disease was in itself incurable; but Jesus had life in Himself according to the power of God, and faith drew out its virtue by touching Him. Such are brought to acknowledge their condition, but they are healed. Outwardly He was in the midst of all Israel-faith reaped the benefit in the sense of its own need and of the glory of His Person. Now, with respect to the one who was the object of His journey, remedy was unavailing. Jesus finds her dead, but does not miss the object of His journey. He raises her again, for He can give life. Thus too with respect to Israel. On the way, those who had faith in Jesus were healed, incurable as they were in themselves; but in fact, as to Israel, the nation was dead in trespasses and sins. Apparently this put a stop to the work of Jesus. But grace will restore life to Israel in the end. We see the perfect grace of Jesus intercepting the effect of the bad tidings brought from the ruler’s house. He says to Jairus, as soon as the messenger has told him of his daughter’s death, and the inutility of troubling the Master any farther, “Be not afraid, only believe.” In effect, although the Lord restores life to a dead Israel in the end of the ages, nevertheless it is by faith that it takes place. The case of the poor woman, although in its direct application it does not go beyond the Jews, yet applies in principle to the healing of every Gentile who, through grace, is brought to touch Jesus by faith.
This history then gives the character of His service, the manner in which-on account of man’s condition-it had to be accomplished.
John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain 5. Conflict of Jesus with the despairing Unbelief of…
5. Conflict of Jesus with the despairing Unbelief of the Demoniac, and the selfish Unbelief of the Gada renes; Healing of the Demoniac, and Triumph over Human Devices for Security. (Mar_5:1-20)
(Parallels: Mat_8:28-34; Luk_8:26-39)
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1And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gada renes. 2And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the 3tombs a man with an unclean spirit, Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains:1 4Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him. 5And always, night and day, he 6was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones2. But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, 7And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not. (8For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.) 9And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered saying, My name is Legion:3 for we are many. 10And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country. 11Now there was there, nigh unto the mountains [mountain]4, a great herd of swine feeding. 12And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them5. 13And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine; and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea (they were about two thou sand),and were choked in the sea. 14And they that fed the swine fled, and told it in the city, and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that was done. 15And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind [sane];6 and they were afraid. 16And they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was possessed with the devil, and also concerning the swine7. 17And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts. 18And when he was come into the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed him that he might be with him. 19Howbeit Jesus suffered him not;8 but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee. 20And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Compare on the parallels.—Mark’s vividness of realization here again appears in many characteristics: the untameableness of the demon, whom no man could bind, even with chains; his crying in the mountains, and the self-tormenting fury of his cutting himself with stones; his seeing Jesus afar off, running to Him, and crying with a loud voice at the first sight of the Lord; the adjuration of Jesus by God; the vehemence of his anxiety that He should not send him away out of that country (Luke: into the abyss); the number of the swine, two thousand; the contrast of the demoniac who was possessed by the legion, sitting clothed and in his right mind; the observation, that the healed man spread the report of the miracle through all Decapolis; and other similar traits. Luke, in his representation of the event, approximates to Mark. Matthew alone makes mention of two demoniacs, on which we may consult the parallels. As it respects the chronology, Mark goes back in the history, manifestly because his order is that of things and not of time. The voyage to Gadara fell in the first year of Christ’s work, and preceded the healing of the paralytic and the controversies touching the Sabbath.
Mar_5:4. Fetters and chains.—This distinction has been explained by referring the fetters to the hands, which Meyer rejects. Fetters are fetters, to whatever part of the body applied. However, these chains were ordinarily used for the hands.
Mar_5:5. Crying, and cutting himself with stones.—Fearful picture of a demoniac terror,—having reached the extreme point of madness, down to rending his own flesh.
Mar_5:6. When he saw Jesus afar off.—Vivid description of the wonderful influence of Christ upon the demoniac. Probably some intelligence concerning Jesus had reached his ears; but that he know Him at once in this His appearance, can be explained only by an intensified spiritual presentiment. It is not probable that he was a heathen.
Mar_5:7. I adjure Thee by God.—The daring misuse of the name of God in the mouth of the demoniac has nothing in it inconsistent, as Strauss and others have thought. The intermixture of praying and adjuring is characteristic of the demoniac, as under the influence of Christ.—That Thou torment me not.—Meyer: “The possessed man, identifying himself with his demon, dreads the pains and convulsions of the casting out.” But if that had been meant, the possessed man would have distinguished himself from his demon, and not identified himself with him. In that identification he felt the nearness and the supremacy of Jesus itself a torment, and still more banishment into the abyss.
Mar_5:8. For He said (had already said).—Compare Luke: παρήγγειλε γάρ, etc.—“If we rely on the exactitude of the sequence of the particulars in the narrative of Mark and Luke, we find here the remarkable circumstance, that the demoniac was not at once healed when the Lord spoke the decisive word. Christ had said to him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit! Now by this the demoniac consciousness in this man was shaken to its depths; but as he then felt himself to be possessed of a legion of evil spirits, the demoniac in him was not reached altogether by an address in the singular. Christ saw at once how the healing was to be perfected, and He asked him his name, etc.” Leben Jesu, i. 296.
Mar_5:9. Legion.—“The word occurs also in the rabbinical writings.” Description of a psychical victim of all possible demoniac influences and possessions. At the same time, it gives a frightful picture of the unclean country in which so many impure spirits were congregated. At this crisis, however, it was partly a word of resisting pride, which sought by boasting to resist the influence; partly a word of silent complaint, in as far as the suffering consciousness of the possessed man coöperated. He does not give his own name, because he still identified his consciousness with that of the unclean spirits, and spoke through them. But when in this sense one calls himself Legion, he describes himself as their leader: as it were, the head of a whole regiment of demons. But the indistinctness and the error of the reply is characteristic of the condition of the man.
Mar_5:10. Not send them away out of the country,—where they found themselves so much at home; especially, as Luke adds, into the hateful abyss of hell. The lawless nature of the country (where Jews lived mingled with Gentiles), which pleased the demons well, Mark denotes by the circumstance of the two thousand swine, emphasizing the greatness of the herd. If their owners were only in part Jews, who merely trafficked in these animals, still they were not justified before the law. Certainly we cannot regard this as exclusively a Gentile territory.
Mar_5:14. And in the country.—In the villages and peasants’ huts, where the swine-feeders partly lived. The whole scene derives from this circumstance a coloring in harmony with the country and the then state of things.
Mar_5:15. Him that was possessed, sitting.—Beautiful and moving contrast.
Mar_5:17. They began to pray Him to depart.—Gradually, after they had received intelligence of their loss, they took heart to desire Christ’s departure, in the conflict of fear and anger, fawning and obstinacy.
Mar_5:18. That He might be with Him.—According to Euthym. Zig., and others, fear of the demons conspired with other feelings in this request. Meyer thinks this could not have been the case, as the engulphing of the animals had already taken place; as if the man believed that, with the swine, the devils also had perished. But, doubtless, his present fearlessness stood on a surer foundation.
Mar_5:19. Jesus suffered him not.—Wherefore? The healed man had friends at home. Probably he was now in danger of despising his own people. But Jesus appointed him to be a living memorial of His own saving manifestation for that entire dark district.
Mar_5:20. In Decapolis.—See on Mat_4:25. “That Jesus did not forbid, but commanded, the promulgation of the matter, is explained by the locality (Peræa), where He was less known, and where there was not the same danger as in Galilee from uproar concerning His person.” (Meyer.) We must also observe that Christ gave him notice of the things that he was to say. He was to announce to his friends how great things the Lord (the covenant God of Israel, the God of revelation) had done for him. This commission was enlarged by the man in two ways: he preached not only to his friends, but to the whole of Decapolis; and not only what the Lord had done to him (perfect), but also what Jesus (as the revelation of the Lord) had done to him, in that He had had mercy upon him (aorist: ἠλέησεν).
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. See on the parallels, and also the heading.—Christ the victor over despairing, as also over selfish, unbelief; and his elevation above human policy for safety, and care of the sick.
2. Demoniac faith, or the faith of fear (Jam_2:19), in all its characteristics: 1. Exalted presentiment and excited spiritualism, without the true spirit. 2. Contradiction and internal distraction: running, deprecating, confessing, denying, praying, adjuring. 3. Slavery: deliverance described as torment, and abandonment to a state of torment as deliverance. 4. Impure and destructive to the last breath (entering the swine and injuring the people).
3. Christ can change the demoniac faith of fear into a blessed and spiritual faith.
4. The entrance of Christ into the land of the Gadarenes a type of His victorious entrance into the kingdom of the dead: 1Pe_3:20; 1Pe_4:6.
5. To a stupid and carnal people, under the power of demons without being fully aware of it, Christ discloses the terrors of the world of spirits, to give them a warning and arousing sign.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
See on Matthew and Luke.—The majestic entrance of our Lord into the district of Gadara: 1. The terror of the evil spirits in the land; 2. the deliverer of those who were bound by Satan; 3. the avenger of the law without legal tribunal; 4. a living condemnation of the earthly-minded in His going as in His coming; 5. the rejected one, who, after His rejection, leaves behind Him the preaching of the Gospel.—Christ annihilates, by the divine, awe-inspiring presence of His person, the horrors of darkness, even as the gentle light of day disperses the blackness of night.—Christ’s stepping over the frontier, and its importance: 1. Over the border of a land,
over the threshold of a house, 3. and entrance into the heart.—The land of the Gadarenes a figure,
of sunk and darkened Judaism (lawlessness), 2. of degraded Christendom (estranged from the law of the Spirit, externalized), 3. degenerate Protestantism (indifferentism).—Image of a corrupt state of things in Church or State: 1. Perverted morals—swine cared for, men abandoned; 2. perverse policy—trade unlawful, the ways given up to madmen; 3. perverted legislation—demons tolerated legionfold, Christ rejected; 4. perverted religiousness—driving away Christ by prayers.—The true demons in the land mock at fetters and chains, but Christ rules them with a word.—The demons enter gladly into the swine; the devilish nature into the animal nature (the old serpent; half serpent, half swine).—Spiritual rebellion against God passes into the unbridled, animal nature.—To a besotted people the Lord preaches by grievous and terrific signs.—The towns and peasants of the Gadarenes; or, the hindrances which the kingdom of God meets with in the land.—Christ passes a milder judgment upon the common ignorance of spiritual sloth, than upon the false knowledge of the hardened; He leaves a preacher of salvation for the Gadarenes in the person of the healed demoniac.—The compassion of Christ in His final glance upon the land of Gadara.—Christ uttered no word concerning His rejection; His only answer was the appointment of this preacher.—The greatest demoniac of the New Testament narrative becomes a preacher of salvation to ten cities.—In the dark land of Gadara Christ leaves for a while a representative of Himself, since they cannot bear His personal presence.—All things in the kingdom of Christ have their time: He sometimes silences, and He sometimes stimulates, the witnesses of His miracles.—The rejections of Christ in their several and yet single character: 1. From Nazareth (through envy); 2. from Gadara (through selfishness and base fear); 3. from Samaria (through fanaticism); 4. from Galilee (through fanaticism and policy); 5. from Jerusalem (through obduracy).
Starke:—Majus:—Christ, the true light, shines in all places, and sends forth His beams even into the Gentile country.—Unrestrained rebellion.—Quesnel:—Hell is a tomb out of which the spirit of impurity proceeds, until God’s judgment binds him in it for ever.—Cramer:—As the devil raged mightily at the time of Christ’s first coming, so also will he at the time of Christ’s second coming, knowing that his time is short, Rev_12:12.—Hedinger:—The delight of worldlings and slaves of sin, corruption, and the grave.—How tyrannically the devil deals with his slaves.—Canstein:—The devil has special delight in tombs.—The devil’s love for mischief.—Bibl. Wirt.:—The ungodly do not love to consort with the godly.—It is a fiendish spirit to take it as torment when men receive benefits from Christ and His people.—O how many are in a spiritual sense possessed by a devil! so many ruling sins, so many unclean spirits.—That the devil desired to abide in that country, was, doubtless, because there were many Jews there who had fallen from their Judaism. (For, as Josephus tells us, this district was full ἑλληνζιόντων.) Eph_6:12; 1Pe_5:8.—The devil is in truth a poor spirit; he has nothing of his own, and is driven hither and thither by the glorious power of God.—Majus:—The children of God should have no fear of the devil, or of wizards, or of any other creatures of Satan.—If God be for us, who can be against us? Rom_8:31.—It is better that earthly creatures should perish, than that a child of God should be kept from salvation.—God’s goodness may be discerned not only in manifest kindnesses, but also in misfortunes.—In rude and earthly hearts God’s wonders excite only fear and flight.—Quesnel:—He who loves this world’s goods will not have Christ long in his heart.—The converted soul longs to be with Jesus.—Canstein:—God uses every one as His wisdom sees will best subserve the interests of His kingdom.—Quesnel:—The grace of conversion is a talent which must be put out to interest, partly in spreading abroad God’s grace and mercy, partly in edifying others in salvation.—Osiander:—God sends preachers for a season even to the unthankful.—Wonder the first step to faith in Jesus.
Gerlach:—The manifold misuse of the name of God among wicked men shows the falseness of the early notion that the devil could not utter it. (Yet this notion contains, in a mythical form, a secret truth, which appears in the declaration that no man can call Jesus Lord but by the Holy Spirit.)—Braune:—We see the same thing now in a certain sense: many there are who reject Christ or repel Him, in the secret consciousness or fear that if they obtain His help they will have to suffer much interruption of their ordinary habits of life, have to submit to many things unpalatable, and endure many severe sacrifices.—When the Christian spirit revives, there are many who would have it shut up only in the minds of others, or who would bind it in a dead letter, because they are concerned to save their unrighteous possessions, or their abused rights, or their licentious wickedness, or their cowardly idleness; not remembering the destruction which came upon those towns forty years after the rejection of Christ, and which always surely comes upon the same sin, and often in a much shorter time.—We must frankly and freely acknowledge the salvation of God and His grace in Christ.—Schleiermacher:—For all the perverse anxiety of men, who set not before them that goal of union with God which Jesus presents to us,—who indeed live under rule, but not that of the kingdom of God,—there is much of the same recoil from Christ as that of the demoniac; they are not in the way to reach the right end, any more than the miserable man in our Gospel. That which holds us firm to Him and His great design, is the immediate influence of the nearness of Christ the Redeemer, which holds our minds fast in a firm and established order, makes our steps sure in this changeable world, and directs them to that ultimate goal, to guide men to which He came into the world.
Gossner:—He (the devil) marked that he was going to be hunted out, and therefore he cried. So is it with all hypocrites.—They saw Jesus, they saw the man, they saw the miracle on the man; but their swine they saw no longer, and that was their grief.—Bauer:—When the Lord comes to demand a sacrifice from them, how many are there in our own day who rather, that being the case, would send Him away altogether!
Footnotes:
[1]Mar_5:1.—Many Codd. read ἦλθεν instead of ἦλθον. But this is not sufficiently authenticated: “probably from Mat_8:28.” Lachmann and Tischendorf, after B., D., Vulgate, read Γερασηνῶν; L., Δ., &c., Γεργεσηνῶν; Cod. A., Recepta, Scholz, Meyer, Γαδαρηνῶν. Comp. the parallel in Matthew.
[2]Mar_5:3.—‘Αλυσει, instead of ἁλύσεσιν, Lachmann, Tischendorf, after B., C., L. Οὐκέτι οὐδείς, Lachmann and Tischendorf, after B., C., D., L., Vulgate: strong negation.
[3]Mar_5:5.—“In the tombs and upon the mountains,” is the best attested order: Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, Tischendorf.
[4]Mar_5:9.—Instead of ἀπεκρίθη λέγων (Elzevir), the better reading is λέγει αὐτῷ.
[5]Mar_5:12.—Πάντες (Elzevir) is wanting in B., C., D., L., Versions; οἱ δαίμονες is wanting in B., C., L., Griesbach, Tischendorf.
[6]Mar_5:13.—The ἦσαν δὲ is wanting in B., C.*, D., Syriac, Vulgate, Griesbach, and Tischendorf.
[7]Mar_5:18.—A., B., D., Vulgate, Lachmann, Tischendorf. ἐμβαίνοντος.
[8]Mar_5:19.—Καὶ οὐκ, A., B., C.; Elzevir reads ὁ δὲ ’Ιησοῦς οὐκ.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain § 51. — TWO DEMONIACS OF GADARA, Mar_5:1-20.
§ 51. — TWO DEMONIACS OF GADARA, Mar_5:1-20.
Came over unto the other side — Landed upon the eastern shore of Gennesaret. Country of the Gadarenes — The evangelist does not say that the miracle of the demoniacs and the swine took place at Gadara; but in the country or region of that city. Gadara, the city, was situated southeasterly from the lake, about eight miles distant, and the Jermuk river intervened. The name of Gergesa (in whose country Matthew locates the miracle) appears also as Gerasa, and is identified by Dr. Thomson with Kerza, situated on the eastern shore. See map, p. 62. Dr. Thomson remarks:
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“In studying the details of the miracle I was obliged to modify one opinion or impression which had grown up with me from childhood. There is no bold cliff overhanging the lake on the eastern side, nor, indeed, on any other, except just north of Tiberias. Everywhere along the northeastern and eastern shores a smooth beach declines gently down to the water. Take your stand a little south of this Chersa. A great herd of swine, we will suppose, is feeding on this mountain that towers above it. They are seized with a sudden panic, rush madly down the almost perpendicular declivity, those behind tumbling over and thrusting forward those before, and as there is neither time nor space to recover on the narrow shelf between the base and the lake, they are crowded headlong into the water, and perish.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain Ch. Mar_5:1-20. The Healing of the Gadarene Demoniac
Ch. Mar_5:1-20. The Healing of the Gadarene Demoniac
1. they came] to the eastern shore, but not even there was the Lord destined to find peace or rest.
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the Gadarenes] All three Gospels which record this miracle vary in their readings between (1) Gadarenes, (2) Gergesenes, and (3) Gerasenes. (α) Gadara, the capital of Peræa, lay S. E. of the southern extremity of Gennesaret, at a distance of about 60 stadia from Tiberias, its country being called Gadaritis, (β) Gerasa lay on the extreme eastern limit of Peraea, and was too far from the Lake to give its name to any district on its borders, (γ) Gergesa was a little town nearly opposite Capernaum, the ruined site of which is still called Kerza or Gersa. Origen tells us that the exact site of the miracle was here pointed out in his day. St Mark and St Luke using the word Gadarenes indicate generally the scene of the miracle, Gadara being a place of importance and acknowledged as the capital of the district. See Thomson’s Land and the Book, pp. 375–378.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (1) The country of the Gadarenes.—The better MSS. give…
(1) The country of the Gadarenes.—The better MSS. give “Gerasenes,” some “Gergesenes.”
V.
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(1-20) See Notes on Mat_8:28-34.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain And they came to the other side of the…
And they came to the other side of the sea. The other side of the sea would be the south-east side of the sea. Into the country of the Gadarenes, or rather, Gera-senes, which is now generally admitted to be the true reading, from Gerasa, Gersa, or Kersa. There was another Gerasa, situated at some distance from the sea, on the borders of Arabia Petraea. The ruins of the Gerasa, here referred to, have been recently discovered by Dr. Thomson, ("The Land and the Book"). Immediately over this spot is a lofty mountain, in which are ancient tombs; and from this mountain there is an almost perpendicular declivity, literally (krhmnov) corresponding accurately to what is required by the description in the narrative of the miracle. Dr. Farrar ("Life of Christ") says that in the days of Eusebius and Jerome, tradition pointed to a steep place" near Gerasa" as the scene of the miracle. The foot of this steep is washed by the waters of the lake, which are at once very deep.
Vers. 1-20. The Lord of spirits.
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There was for Christ, during his earthly ministry, no escape from personal toil from the claims made upon his benevolence by human misery, or from man"s ingratitude. He crossed the lake to seek repose, but at once, on landing, was met by a case of the utmost wretchedness and need, demanding the exercise of his compassionate authority. His stay was brief, yet long enough to earn the thanks and the devotion of one poor liberated captive, and long enough to qualify and to commission that healed one for a sacred ministry of benevolence.
I We have here a representation of THE WRETCHED STATE OF THE SINNER.
1. That state is attributable to possession by an evil power. This does not, indeed, affect man"s responsibility, but it affirms the action of supernatural agency. Sinners "have fallen into the snare of the devil.
2. The signs of that state are many and distressing. Like the demoniac, the sinner is injurious to himself, is harmful to others, and consequently is unfit for society.
3. A picture is here painted of the sinner"s hopeless condition. As the demoniac"s possession was manifold ("we are legion"), was prolonged, and Was so severe that all human efforts had failed to bring relief, so was the condition of the heathen world when the Saviour came to earthen condition so debased and so confirmed in its misery that to the human eye no dawn-streak of hope was visible. And the heart, abandoned to the control of evil, is in a state for which no human relief or help is available.
II We have here a representation of THE SINNER"S MIGHTY SAVIOUR. A greater contrast than that between the wretched and raving maniac and the calm and holy Jesus it would not be possible to imagine. Yet the two came together. Divine authority and compassion encountered human sin, foulness, and degradation, and the demon was exorcised and the sufferer made whole.
1. Observe the Divine authority of the Lord is acknowledged. It is certainly remarkable that from the month of the demoniac should come the confession that Jesus is "the Son of the Most High God." This Christ is; and, were he not this, his approach would bring no comfort to the sinner"s heart.
2. In addition to this verbal acknowledgment, we observe an actual submission to and experience of Christ"s power. "The unclean spirit came out." Jesus is "mighty to save." As during his ministry, so wherever the gospel is preached, the power of Christ is proved in actual experience. However formidable the foe may be, Jesus is the Conqueror.
III We have here a representation of THE SINNER"S SALVATION.
1. There is complete deliverance from the tyranny of former enemies. "Taken captive by the Lord"s servant unto the will of God such is the description given by an apostle of the great and spiritual emancipation which nevertheless brings souls into a new and better bondage.
2. Sanity is a consequence of our Lord"s interposition. "When he came to himself" is the description of the change which took place in the repenting prodigal. Only he who turns to God can be truly said to be "in his right mind.
3. Tranquility is a natural sign of a spiritual restoration. The Saviour is the Prince of peace, and the gospel is a gospel of peace, and peace is a fruit of the Spirit. True religion calms agitation, stills the tempests of the soul, and brings harmony to human life.
IV We have an example of the WITNESS OF THE SAVED SINNER TO THE SAVIOUR. The conduct of the healed demoniac is an emblem of the consecrated testimony of the ransomed soul to the great Deliverer.
1. It is prompted by grateful affection A affection that would fain abide in the valued society of the Redeemer.
2. It is appointed and authorized by the Lord himself: "Go to thy house," etc.
3. It is borne especially to those nearest and dearest: "thy friends.
4. It consists of personal experience: "how great things the Lord hath done for thee.
5. It excites interest and wonder. Such testimony from such a witness cannot be without effect. The saved lead others to the same Saviour whose virtue they have themselves experienced.
HOMILIES BY A.F. MUIR Vers. 1-20. Legion.
General question of demon-possession. An aggravated form of Satanic influence. Intelligible enough on the principle of provocation and desperation: light and darkness are strongest side by side. The advent of Christ roused to intense activity and excitement the whole demoniacal realm. In this scene there is exemplified
I MORAL ANTAGONISM. (Vers. 2, 6)
1. Instinctive. Spontaneous; prescient; yet furnishing no intelligible reason. "An intensified spiritual presentiment" (Lange).
2. Weakness of the demoniac shown by:
a. Excitement.
b. Self-contradiction. Attraction and repulsion alternating.
c. Use of borrowed weapons.
The exorcism, doubtless so often uttered over him by magicians and ecclesiastics, is all the lore he seems to possess in the way of religion.
3. Strength of Christ proved by calmness and self-possession, and resolute pursuit of his object.
4. Utter and absolute. "What have I to do with thee?... Torment me not.
II MORAL ASCENDANCY. (Vers. 9-13)
1. Instant exercise of authority. Calm, self-possessed, and fearless. He had already discerned and measured his opponent, and decided as to how he would deal with him.
2. Spiritual insight and skill. The great Physician had made diagnosis of his case. Mental surgery was needed, based upon the most profound truths of psychology. The man had to be discriminated and freed from the indwelling demon. The former had little or no sense of his own personal identity. A Roman legion had probably been quartered near, and when he saw their number and power he felt that they somewhat resembled that which had quartered itself within his own nature. With maniacal vanity he readily adopted the title, "Legion." Pride and wretchedness were probably both involved in the retention of the name; it represented the dominant principle in his confused consciousness. Christ asked him, "What is thy name?" that he might rouse him to a sense of personal identity: a wise measure.
3. Rectoral discipline. "He gave them leave:" apparently their own suggestion, but granted
(1) on principle of highest curative psychology objective disenchantment; the character and distinctness of the unclean occupants of the man"s nature being thus outwardly and visibly set forth, his better self, enfranchised, would be the more likely to assert itself;
(2) in pursuance of rectoral discipline. The unclean, unprincipled habits of the people in violating the Law being thus avenged.
III MORAL DECISION. (Vers, 14-20) The Gadarenes had to make up their minds with respect to the great Stranger.
1. The data. (Vers. 14-16) Material and moral stood forth in opposition, as in so many other instances. How was their relative importance to be estimated?
2. The decision. A unanimous petition for him to depart. How could such men be expected to judge otherwise? They had grand ideas of Christ, but of the wrong sort.
3. The response. Instant departure. He took them at their word. "They believed not on him," and acting upon their unbelief urged their request. The conflict of anger and fear, fawning and obstinacy. A word was enough; nay, a wish, even unexpressed, has often secured the same result. Not the storm, not the evil repute of the people, not even the horror of the demoniac, could deter him from coming; but a word sent him away! How careful should men be in their attitude to the heavenly Visitant! He went, but not without having, in the person of the restored maniac, a monument of his saving power and grace. Every region and every heart has its witness to the same. M.
HOMILIES BY R. GREEN Vers. 1-20. A man with an unclean spirit.
It is no part of the office of the homilist to enter upon the field of apologetics or exegesis. Criticism and interpretation provide the words with their definite meanings. Homiletics unfold and apply practical lessons. The difficulties of this narrative must, therefore, be discussed elsewhere.
I Our attention is first arrested by the physical derangement exhibited in this case of possession by "an unclean spirit." The sadness of this spectacle is amply exhibited in the words of vers. 2-5. The overpowering of the entire personality of the victim by "an unclean spirit" points to a fearful possibility of the human life. Does sin open the door to the spirit of evil? The man was under the power of an unclean spirit, was led to do unclean acts. He dwelt remote from his fellows, "in the tombs." He was possessed of unusual physical strength; he could not be bound, "no, not with a chain." "No man had strength to tame him." This unusual power was exercised in "crying out and cutting himself with stones." Whatever the precise nature of this affliction, the scene exhibits the human life in its uttermost derangement.
II On the moral side the attitude of the unclean spirit towards Jesus is expressed as one of utter repudiation: "What have I to do with thee, Jesus, the Son of the Most High God?" They had nothing in common. What can the spirit of evil have to do with Jesus? They mutually recede; they are mutually opposed. These appear before us as representing two kingdoms, wholly diverse in character. The one is a kingdom of evil and uncleanness; the other a kingdom of peace and righteousness. In the one the human life is disorganized; in the other it attains its true dignity, harmony, and blessedness. The one is for it a kingdom of darkness; the other a kingdom of light. In the one is death; life is found in the other. They have nothing in common; they are mutually exclusive, mutually destructive.
III The supreme authority of Jesus, "Son of the Most High God," in the sphere of the human life is again illustrated, as also his attitude towards all human suffering. "With authority he commands," "Come forth, thou unclean spirit, out of the man," and in pitifulness he releases the oppressed. Thus is fulfilled that "which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our diseases." Elsewhere is this more amply illustrated.
IV The changed condition of the life when Jesus has exerted upon it his power, and evicted the spirit of uncleanness, is simply and beautifully portrayed in the picture presented to the eyes of the multitude who "came to see what it was that had come to pass," and beheld "him that was possessed with devils sitting, clothed, and in his right mind." With affectionate gratitude he now cleaves to Jesus, beseeching "him that he might be with him." The refusal was not in harsh judgment against the redeemed one, but for the instruction and profit of all others that he may go and "publish how great things Jesus had done for him." Out of this incident let the central words, "What have I to do with thee?" be chosen as a test by which each may prove his nearness to Jesus or his recession from him. At one extreme lies this word of utter rejection the word of Satanic repudiation; at the other, words which express the most complete absorption of the life in devotion to him To me to live is Christ." This declares the perfect identification of the individual life with the person, the mission, the spirit of Jesus. The one affirms, "I know no life within the sphere of Christ"s kingdom;" the other, "I know no life beyond it. His name defines the boundary of my aims, my activities, my hopes. I am lost, buried, absorbed in him; to all things else I die.
How many are the gradations between these extremes! let each test himself as to the attitude he assumes towards Jesus.
1. As to a supreme submission to his authority as "the Son of the Most High God.
2. As to a calm and loving reliance upon him as "Jesus," the "Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
3. As to a sincere alliance with him in the work of raising men from the dominion of evil casting out the spirit of all foulness from the human life.
4. As to a perfect fellowship with Christ in the communion of sympathy and love. G.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON Vers. 1-20. Christ, the Redeemer of the intellect.
I THE EXTREME OF HUMAN DEGRADATION AND MISERY. Bondage, impotent violence, suicidal mania. We cannot make out a theory of the facts; the facts are certain, and sad enough in this as in that age. There may be a duplicity in the consciousness of man, so that the being is threatened with a rending asunder. There is a certain reflection of this duplicity in all of us.
II VIOLENT CONFLICT PRECEDES HAPPY CHANGE. There are crises when we dread the presence of the power of good; it means a sharp struggle at hand in the depths of the soul for our very life. Men will sometimes endure the present misery rather than undergo the pain which is to cure it. But the surgeon is no cruel tormentor; nor is the faithful teacher of the truth to be feared, but loved.
III THE BLESSING OF A SOUND MIND. It may be lest; thank God it may be recovered. As there are parasites which prey upon the lower forms of animal and vegetable life, so there are ideas which may possess the imagination and confound the whole conscious life of the soul. Nowhere do we find the hope of salvation in all its senses, from physical and moral maladies, and those inscrutable to science, so clearly held out as in the gospel.
IV THE DIVINE POWER AND PITY. "Tell thy friends how much the Lord has done for thee, and that he pitied thee." Power and pity fused in love: this is the soul of the world, the principle of its redemption. It has infused its strong enchantment into nature, and healing is ever open to us if we will yield to its influence on our being. J.
HOMILIES BY J.J. GIVEN Vers. 1-20. Parallel passages: Mat_8:28-34 Luk_8:26-40. Gadarene or Gergesene demoniacs.
I CURE OF THE GADARENE DEMONIAC.
1. The district. The country called Gilead in the Old Testament, at a later period and in the New Testament goes by the name of Peraea. It was south of Bashan, and formed a sort of peninsula, bounded by the Yarmuck (anciently Hieromax) on the north, Arnon (now Wady el Mojeb) on the south, and Jordan on the east. The part of Gilead between the Yarmuck and Jabbok at present Wady Zurka, is now Jebel Ajlun; while the section south of the Jabbok is the Belka. In this region was a district called Decapolis, from the fact of its being studded over With ten cities, all, except Scythopolis, east of the Jordan. Of these cities one was Gadara, identified with the ruins of Urn Keis, the capital of Peraea; while Gergesa was the name of a little town, identified with the present Kerza, on the Wady Semakh, opposite Magdala. Either the territory adjacent was named after one or other of these towns, or St. Mark and St. Luke give a general indication of the district that was the scene of the miracle, when they call it the country of the Gadarenes; while St. Matthew gives the exact name, when he places it in the country of the Gergesenes. Dr. Thomson, in "The land and the Book," says, "The city itself where it was wrought was evidently on the shore And in this Gersa, or Chersa, we have a position which fulfils every requirement of the narratives, and with a name so near that in Matthew as to be in itself a strong corroboration of the truth of this identification. It is within a few rods of the shore, and an immense mountain rises directly above it, in which are ancient tombs, out of some of which the two men possessed of the devils may have issued to meet Jesus. The lake is so near the base of the mountain, that the swine, rushing madly down it, could not stop, but would be hurried on into the water and drowned Take your stand a little south of this Chersa. A great herd of swine, we will suppose, is feeding on this mountain that towers above it. They are seized with a sudden panic, rush madly down the almost perpendicular declivity, those behind tumbling over and thrusting forward those before; and, as there is neither time nor space to recover on the narrow shelf between the base and the lake, they are crowded headlong into the water and perish." The name Gergesa has led to the supposition that the Girgashites, one of the seven Canaanitish nations, originally occupied this territory. Be this as it may, the district was pleasantly situated east and southeast of the Sea of Galilee, and the towns of Gadara and Gergesa were flourishing. The former was much the larger, and, according to Josephus, was rich he says, "Many of the citizens of Gadara were rich men while that of Gergesa was of considerable importance.
2. A sad contrast. We cannot forbear noticing, as we pass, how much wretchedness may exist at the same time and in the same place with material wealth and mercantile prosperity, and amid all the beauties of natural scenery. This world itself all through is a strange mixture of mercy and of wrath; of the beautiful and the terrible; of plenty and of poverty; of sorrow and of joy; of sunshine and of shower. No April day was ever more variable. Here, in the country of the Gadarenes, with its well-to-do and wealthy inhabitants, and their profitable herds of swine, were two wretched creatures in extreme misery, both mental and bodily. While others bought and sold and got gain, these creatures were a terror to themselves and all around. While others occupied comfortable dwellings, these unfortunates tenanted sepulchral caverns which abounded in the district, and of which, as we have seen, some remain to the present day. While others were decently clad, or even gorgeously attired, these miserable individuals refused the decency of raiment. While others went at large, enjoying the sweets of life and that liberty which makes life sweet, these demoniacs had to be bound with chains and fetters (pedaiv , equivalent to shackles for the feet, and alusesi , equivalent to chains in general).
3. The number accounted for. St. Matthew mentions two; St. Mark and St. Luke speak of one. How are we to explain this? The one mentioned by two of the evangelists was fiercer than his fellow; he was wilder and worse than the other. Or perhaps he had belonged to a higher class in society, and had moved in a better rank of life; or perhaps his position had been in some respect more prominent, whether owing to wealth, or profession, or education; and so the calamity that had befallen him was more conspicuous, and he himself better known. Something of this sort seems hinted at by St. Luke, when he speaks of the demoniac who met Jesus, as "a certain man out of the city. " At all events, from any or all these causes St. Luke separates his case from the other, and singles him out from his comrade in affliction.
4. A distinct feature added by each evangelist. St. Matthew tells us that they made the way impassable for traveler"s; St. Luke, that he was without clothing; and St. Mark, in the passage specially under consideration, that he cried night and day, and cut himself with stones. St. Matthew"s narrative of this case is somewhat meagre, St. Luke"s fuller, and St. Mark"s more circumstantial than either.
5. The period in particular of demoniac possession. That demoniac possession was distinct from disease, or lunacy, or epilepsy, is sufficiently evident from a single Scripture, namely, Mat_4:24, where we read that they "brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them." If asked why demoniac possession so manifested itself at the time of our Lord"s appearance on earth, and not before, nor at least in the same way since? we must simply reply, in addition to what we have formerly said on this subject, that we can no more tell this than we can tell why smallpox manifested itself as a terrible scourge to our race at a certain time, and not sooner; or why cholera ravaged Europe at a certain period since the beginning of this century, and not before; or why that fearful plague, which the Greek historian has described with such graphic power and thrilling effect, never visited them till the time of the Peloponnesian war, and has never returned again, as far as history informs us, to renew its work of desolation there. But, though Scripture does not explicitly specify the cause, we can readily suppose a reason which has the appearance at least of probability. That reason we have already alluded to as found in Satan"s well-authenticated powers of imitation, and we shall only subjoin in this place a few additional circumstances to confirm its probability. In early times, when the Lord afflicted Egypt with his plagues, and his servants, Moses and Aaron, wrought miracles in the field of Zoan, Satan had his servants there also, and Jannes and Jambres either possessed or pretended the power to work miracles too, counterfeiting or counteracting to the utmost of their capacity those of Moses and Aaron. From time to time, in the subsequent history of Israel, the Lord raised up prophets to instruct and forewarn the people; but who can be ignorant of the fact that Satan at times employed his prophets false prophets to beguile and mislead? When our Saviour was on earth he warned his disciples that false Christs would arise and deceive many. Satan raised them up, and so history confirmed the statement. In like manner, when the Lord Jesus Christ had taken to himself a true body and a reasonable soul when the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among men Satan, by himself or by his servants, took possession of the bodies of men, cruelly torturing their flesh and agonizing their spirit. Nor are we prepared to say that demoniac possession has altogether ceased. We have seen men so act, and heard men so speak, and have been informed of such fiendish atrocity on their part, that we could account for their violent and outrageous conduct, or for their mischievous and diabolical acts, or for their horrid and blasphemous expressions, in no other way than that some demon, or the devil himself, had been permitted to take temporary possession of them.
II THE PAST HISTORY OR PREVIOUS STATE OF THIS DEMONIAC.
1. His madness. When we compare and combine the account given of this poor demoniac by St. Mark and St. Luke, as also the brief notice of both demoniacs by St. Matthew, we have a most affecting picture. He had lost his senses and become exceeding fierce, so that no man could tame him, and no man could in safety pass that way. To the folly of the lunatic he had added the furiousness of the madman. Reason had reeled and left the helm; the once goodly ship had lost compass and chart and helmsman; it was drifting along, the sport of furious winds and stormy waves.
2. His wretchedness. This wretched man had not lost life, it is true, but all that could make life desirable, or render it happy. Unclothed, uncared for, he had fallen back into the condition of savage life, and to some extent had sunk lower than the brute. Houseless and homeless, he led a vagrant life now a dweller in the mountains, now a tenant of the tombs. His agony of mind was fearful. W hen not attacking others he acted the part of a self-tormentor. His cries waked the echoes of the mountains, or made the gloom of the sepulcher more dreadful. But cries were insufficient to vent the deep anguish of his spirit. He cut himself with stones, and, by making gashes in his body, sought to transfer his suffering from the mind to the body, or at least divide it between them. All this had lasted for years, as it would appear from the statement, "he had devils long time." Neither had he known much of respite or aught of relaxation; "always night and day" this sorrowful and suffering condition continued; no lucid interval that we read of; no pleasant period of relief, however short, that we know of. At times, moreover, he was deprived of his l iberty. This had frequently occurred. "He had often been bound with fetters and chains," until, by a sort of superhuman power, he plucked them asunder or broke them in pieces.
3. The lessons to be learnt from all this. There are two lessons to be learnt from this part of the subject. The first l esson we may learn from it is the condition of the sinner, and the second is the hostility of Satan. Confining attention to the first, while we have examined the condition of the demoniac as a fact a stern fact, and a sad one we cannot help thinking that it furnishes us at the same time with a figure of what the sinner more or less is. He may, indeed, have the use of all his faculties, both of mind and body; nevertheless, he is a fool. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." He is beside himself; for we read of the prodigal, on his repentance and return to his father"s house, that "he came to himself." Was ever folly greater than that of the man who prefers the trifles of time to the realities of eternity; who day by day barters the salvation of the soul for some gratification of sense; who, amid all the uncertainty of life, braves the danger of delay; who, not- withstanding the shortness of time, neglects from one season of opportunity to another, from one period of existence to another, the things that belong to his peace? What madness can equal his who treats all these things as though they were cunningly devised fables; who turns his back on God and his Word, on the sabbath and the sanctuary, on prayer and praise; who trifles with the great things of God until death stares him in the face, entertaining the vain fancy that a few tears, or prayers, or sighs on the bed of death will reverse all the past, make amends for a life of sin, and serve as a passport to heaven? That man is a demoniac in very fact, whom Satan so possesses, so leads captive at his will, and whose eyes he so blinds, that, though Providence is speaking with many a solemn voice; though his own frailty is pleading with him in the silence of his chamber, and during the night-watches; though mortality in sundry ways forces itself on his attention; though conscience is upbraiding, until it becomes so seared that it upbraids no longer; though the Spirit of grace is striving, as he has been striving long; though the Saviour with outstretched arms is saying, "Come, come and welcome," "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest;" though the eternal Father is waiting to embrace the returning penitent, and swearing, "As I live, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; yet that sinner, in spite of all, keeps running along the downward way to hell, plunging deeper and deeper into wretchedness, rushing upon ruin, and rushing at the same time against the thick bosses of Jehovah"s buckler. If you exhort him, he is sullen; if you remonstrate with him, he is offended; if you reprove him, he is outrageous; if you speak plainly, yet affectionately, it may be he returns a surly answer, proving himself to be what Scripture describes, as "such a son of Belial, that a man cannot speak to him." What though he is neither naked, nor houseless, nor dwelling among the tombs, nor bound with fetters! Are not the fetters of sin the worst that ever bound any man? "What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death." Has not a course of iniquity clothed thousands in rags, yea, left them without anything like decent clothes at all? Has not drunkenness, or lewdness, or idleness left hundreds without either house or home? Does not wilful waste make woeful want? Who can ever forget the story of the prodigal, when" he would fain have filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat," when "no man gave unto him," and when he said, "I perish with hunger "? Has not the devil"s service brought many a man to his tomb, humanly speaking, before his time? for the wicked do not live half their days. We need not speak of the misery which the sinner feels when the iron enters into his soul, the bitter regret, the unavailing remorse, the terrors of conscience, the second death, and the smoke of their torment ascending up for ever and ever.
III THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE CURED DEMONIAC.
1. The great change. "The unclean spirits went out;" or, as St. Luke expresses it, "Then went the devils out of the man." Here was a practical exemplification of the Saviour entering into the strong man"s house and spoiling his goods. The strong man was expelled by One stronger than himself. His terrible hold was loosened, his power paralyzed, captivity led captive, and the prey taken from the mighty. It is thus with every one who has been rescued from the grasp of Satan, who has been "snatched as a brand out of the burning," who has been convinced of sin and its attendant miseries and everlasting wretchedness, who has been enlightened with the knowledge of the grace and mercy of the Saviour, whose will has been renewed by the Spirit of God, and who has thus been made willing in the day of Divine power. Oh that the time may soon come, when in every land, and through all parts of the habitable globe, God in his great mercy shall open the blind eyes, and smite the fetters off the gyred limbs, and emancipate the oppressed of Satan, setting the captives for ever free!
2. Evidences of the change. People were curious to see the mighty miracle that had been wrought, and came to Jesus to see the strange sight about which, no doubt, they had heard much. And, arriving at the place, they "see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting. " Ah! there is a change, and clear evidence of it. What a subject for a painting! The madman is come to his right mind; the maniac is tamed; reason, that godlike faculty, is restored; his fierceness is subdued. The anguish of his spirit has subsided; his wild cries have ceased; his self-inflicted bodily pains those shocking wounds are healed. People talk of the man who could tame the most savage horses, and hold them for a time as if spellbound; they speak of menagerie-men who can tame lions and conquer bears; they laud the poet"s comic humor in his piece entitled "The Taming of the Shrew;" but the taming of shrew, or lion, or bear, or horse is nothing compared with the taming of this demoniac man, or of any other man whose fierce passions have been let loose, whose soul and body have been subjected to Satan"s sway, and whoso wicked and wayward career has been marked with as bad, if not worse, than demoniac madness. There he sits! as though the lion had become a lamb; as though the tiger had forgotten his fury, and laid aside his fierceness; as though the bear had changed its nature, and become a mild domestic creature an emblem of that better day when all men shall become such, and a foreshadow of that coming time which the prophet describes so beautifully, when "the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together.
3. His posture a proof of docility. There he sits, with the docility of the child and the guileless simplicity of the Christian. There he sits, as Saul did in the days of his youth, an apt scholar at the feet of Gamaliel. Rather, there he sits, as Mary, at the feet of the same Saviour who bestowed on her the high encomium, "One thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen the good part, that shall not be taken away from her." There he sits, with thoughtful countenance and attentive mind, and listening ear, to drink in every word that falls from the Saviour"s lips. There he sits, humbly at the Saviour"s feet, while his eye rests placidly on that Saviour"s face, as though he said, "Lord, how I love thee for all thy grace to me! Lord, what wilt thou have me to do, that I may express that warm love which glows in my breast, and exhibit the effects of that wondrous grace?" It is thus with every converted sinner. We sit at Jesus" feet, and whether he speaks himself to us in his Word, or by his servants who preach to us from that Word, or by his Spirit who applies that Word, it is all the same. Willingly we will lose no lesson, we will miss no opportunity, we will neglect no means of grace, where we expect that Jesus will manifest himself to our souls and talk to us by the way, opening to us the Scriptures. The whole of the hundred and nineteenth psalm is a commentary on this teachableness of spirit, and willingness to sit at the Master"s feet; vers. 33-40 inclusive may be specially read in this connection. Down to old age we will sit at the Saviour"s feet, in order to learn of him. like Simeon, like Anna, like the picture of the righteous set before us in the ninety-second psalm, "The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon." Now, who are they, and where are they, that flourish so? "Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God." And when and why do they flourish so? "They shall still bring forth fruit in old age," and "to show that the Lord is upright." We are bound to make all due allowance for the decay of nature and such weakness as is incident to the decline of life; but it is distressing to find at times the aged magnifying their infirmities as an excuse for absenting themselves from the house of God; worse still, perhaps, when they stay away without pretending any excuse. It is one of the worst signs; for none that ever truly followed the Lord in youth or in maturity ever forsook him in old age. We remember well seeing a very old man, much above ninety years of age, helped into his pew in church every sabbath; and there was the patriarchal man leaning on his staff, as he sat at Jesus" feet, a devout and venerable and earnest worshipper. Even when age may have blunted the faculties and dulled the hearing, it is still our duty to forsake not the assembling of ourselves with the people of God. We knew the case of a deaf man who, though he could not hear a word preached, came regularly to church, because, as he said, he could see to read the psalms and lessons and other parts of the service, and in any case could help the attendance by his presence and example.
4. His place of safety wets there. This demoniac sat at Jesus" feet for safety. May we suppose that he had heard of the man, of whom we read in the parallel passage of another Gospel (Luke 11), from whom the unclean spirit, having gone out, came back again with seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and entered in and dwelt there, so that "the last state of that man was worse than the first"? At all events, he felt that there was no safety but in nearness to Christ; and this is the proper sentiment for every follower and friend of Jesus to entertain. When Peter followed Christ afar off, Peter fell. Nearness to Christ is safety, separation or distance from him is insecurity and danger. We need his grace, for by it we stand; his strength, for by it we are fortified against temptation; his blood, for by it we are cleansed, and we need a fresh application of it daily; his sacrifice, it is the ground of our acceptance, and we must look to it always; his example, it must be our daily pattern; his faith, "the life which we now live in the flesh we must live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us;" his person, Christ in you, the hope of glory;" his presence, it is our comfort, for he has said, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee;" his protection, that, where Satan would sift us as wheat, he may intercede for us, that our faith fail not; his love, to keep up the flame, that would otherwise burn low or go out altogether.
5. His clothing evidence of restored sanity. He was sitting as a scholar at Jesus" feet, as also for safety, as we have seen; he was clothed, and in his right mind, the former being, as well as his sitting, evidence of the latter. We dislike and disapprove of those naked figures which we see in books and paintings and statues; of whatever use they may be to the anatomist or painter or statuary, they are, we think, unsuitable to Christian refinement and inconsistent with Christian purity. Their usefulness to people in general is questionable. The passions of fallen humanity are bad enough of themselves, and in their own nature, without exciting them. The demoniac cured by our Lord is clothed; the sinner converted to Christ is clothed likewise. When brought to the foot of the cross, and seated at the feet of Jesus, he is clothed. He has on the" fine linen, clean and white," which is "the righteousness of saints." He is "found in Christ, not having on his own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is by the faith of Christ, the righteousness of God by faith." He has obeyed the precept, accepted the advice, feeling the benefit of the counsel, "I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see." A practical question is here suggested. Do you, reader, possess that robe? It is put on by the hand of faith. Have you that precious faith? If not if you have not already "good hope through grace," pray for that faith. Do not be ashamed or afraid to do so. Do not neglect or delay to ask it. Ask the Holy Spirit to work faith in your heart, and so unite you to Christ, for "if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature;" and God gives his Holy Spirit to them that ask him.
6. Restoration to reason. His mind is right about sin, as "that abominable thing which God hates," and hurtful to man as hateful to God; right about Satan, "as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour a murderer from the beginning;" right about the Saviour, as the chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely;" and right about holiness, as the way of happiness and the way to heaven.
IV THE POWER THAT RESCUED THE DEMONIAC FROM WRETCHEDNESS AND RUIN.
1. The greatness of that power. The possession of this demoniac was something singularly shocking. It was not one demon, but many, that had made him their prey. "My name," he said, "is legion: for we are many." The name is a Latin name, and denotes a levying or enlisting, then, a body of troops so levied. The full complement of a Roman legion was six thousand infantry, and a squadron of three hundred cavalry. Each legion was divided into ten cohorts; each cohort into three maniples; and each maniple into two centuries. Then again, when arrayed in order of battle, there were three lines Principes, Hastati, and Triari! What a formidable host! How powerful, and how numerous! The host and the hostility, the multitude and the enmity, the strength and the skill thus conveyed by the name here applied to the demons which had had possession of this man, are fearful to contemplate. Yet the power of Christ expelled them, mighty, multitudinous, and malicious though they were. It was the power of Christ did it all. Demons owned that power. They had faith in him, but not of the right sort; "they believed, and trembled." So here they feared he was coming to judge them and consign them to torment before the time. Jesus has the self-same power still; "he is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him.
2. The miserable home of those demons. They would rather go anywhere than go home. They trembled at the power of Christ, while they dreaded the torments he will one day inflict. They would rather enter into swine, rather go into the sea, rather go into the worst and filthiest spot of earth, than go back into the deep abyss of hell. It was not the abyss of earth or the abyss of ocean, but the abysmal depth of that unfathomed pit of hell, which they so much dreaded. And oh! are sinners not afraid of rushing with eyes open into that dreadful, deep abyss?
3. Their fiendish malice. Now that they are cast out, and can no longer destroy their victim, they are actuated by demon-like malevolence, and try to keep others from the Saviour by causing the loss of their swine. In this way they seek to prejudice and even enrage them against the Saviour. They seem to have succeeded, for the Gadarenes "began to pray him to depart out of their coasts.
4. The sufferings of the brute creation. Why, it may naturally enough be asked, are poor dumb animals subjected to sufferings? Or how is it possible that the demons could exert any influence of the kind stated upon them? In reply to the latter question, it may be sufficient to mention the influence which man exerts upon animals such as the dog, the horse, the elephant, in the way of training and teaching. If animals are thus receptive of human influence, why-should they not be receptive of other and, in some respects, more powerful influence? Why should they not be accessible to, and receptive of, demoniac influence, as well as that of men? The other question stands on different ground. The lower animals, placed under man"s control at the first, and granted to man for useful service, share to some extent in man"s Varying fortunes, and are entitled to humane and kind treatment at the hands of man; but that they suffered in consequence of man"s fall and sin is, we think, unquestionable. Their position now is abnormal just as man"s own position is abnormal, for does not "the whole creation groan and travail in pain together until now"? Besides, they often suffer, in common with man, in special disasters such as conflagrations, shipwrecks, and catastrophes of similar kinds.
5. A mixture of mercy and judgment. While mercy was shown to the demoniac in his miraculous cure, judgment was inflicted on the owners of the swine for their sin. Jesus performed the act of mercy, and permitted the exercise of the other. The demons could not have moved an inch without his permission. This side of the miracle was judgment, and well deserved. Who were these Gadarenes or Gergesenes? Were they Gentiles or were they Jews? If the former if Gentiles, they were tempting their Jewish neighbors, and they had no right to do that. If they were Jews, they were breaking the law of God, and they could not long expect to prosper, and to continue doing that. If they were Jewish proprietors, who employed Gentile swineherds for the purpose of tending and herding their swine, they were both sinning themselves and tempting others to sin; and so both partook of the result and shared the consequences of their crime. Here, too, we must notice the hardening effect of sin long persevered in. These Gadarenes, whatever their nationality, whether Jew or Gentile, had become like swine themselves swinish in spirit and disposition. They actually preferred their swine to the Saviour, and "besought him to depart out of their coasts! J.J.G.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Into the country of the Gadarenes.
Mar_5:1-20
Into the country of the Gadarenes.
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The country of the Gadarenes
I spent a night and part of two days in the vicinity of the Lake of Tiberias. My tent was pitched near the Hot Baths, about a mile south of the town of Tiberias, and, consequently, near the south end of the lake. In looking across the water to the other side, I had before me the country of the Gadarenes, where the swine, impelled by an evil spirit, plunged into the sea. I was struck with a mark of accuracy in the sacred writers which had never occurred to me till then. They state that the swine ran violently down the steep place, or precipice (the article being required by the Greek), and were choked in the sea. It is implied here, first, that the hills in that region approach near the water; and, secondly, that they fail off so abruptly along the shore that it would be natural for a writer familiar with that fact to refer to it as well known. Both these implications are correct. A mass of rocky hills overlook the sea on that side, so near the water that one sees their dark outline reflected from its surface, while their sides are in general so steep that a person familiar with the scenery would hardly think of speaking of a steep place or precipice, where so much of the coast forms but one continuous precipice. Our translators omit the definite article, and show, by this inadvertence, how naturally the more exact knowledge of the evangelists influenced their language. (H. B. Hackett, D. D.)
The tombs
These tombs were caverns, natural or artificial, in the sides of the rocks, containing cells in which the dead bodies were placed and closed up. The entrance to the cave itself was not closed, and thus it might be used as a habitation. Such ancient tombs still exist in the hills above Gersa, as well as at Gadara, indeed the whole region, as Mr. Tristram remarks, is so perforated with these rock chambers, that a home for the demoniac might be found, whatever locality be assigned as the scene of the miracle. (Dean Mansel.)
Eastern tombs
In the East the receptacles of the dead are always situated at some distance from the abodes of the living; and if belonging to kings or men of rank, are spacious vaults and magnificent structures, containing, besides the crypt that contains the ashes of their solitary tenants, several chambers or recesses which are open and accessible at the sides. In these the benighted traveller often finds a welcome asylum; in these the dervishes and santons, wandering mendicants that infest the towns of Persia and other eastern countries, generally establish themselves, and they are often, too, made the haunts of robbers and lawless people, who hide themselves there to avoid the consequences of their crimes. Nor are they occupied only by such casual and dangerous tenants. When passing through a desolate village near the Lake of Tiberius, Giovanni Finati saw the few inhabitants living in the tombs as their usual place of residence; and at Thebes the same traveller, when he was introduced to Mr. Beechy, the British Consul, found that gentleman had established himself, while prosecuting his researches among the ruins of that celebrated place, in the vestibule of one of the tombs of the ancient kings. Captain Light, who travelled over the scene of our Lords interview with the demoniac, describes the tombs as still existing in the form of caverns cut in the live rock, like those at Petra-as wild and sequestered solitudes, divided into a number of bare and open niches, well suited to be places of refuge to those unhappy lunatics for whom the benevolence of antiquity had not provided a better asylum. (R. Jamieson, D. D.)
Power of evil spirits, and power over them
I. The power of evil spirits.
1. As seen in its extensiveness. Their field is the world.
2. As seen in its effects.
(1) In institutions: paganism; pseudo-Christian forms; governments.
(2) In society: amusements; sentiments; prejudices; practices; vices; crimes; results.
II. Christs power over evil spirits.
1. Feared by them-I adjure Thee by God, torment me not.
2. Hated of them-What have we, etc.
3. Absolute over them-Come out of him, thou unclean spirit, etc.
(1) This exercise of Christs power over evil spirits a prophecy of their ultimate subjection to Him.
(2) Christ only can deliver us from the power of Satan.
(3) The contrast between Satans power and Christs is here graphically and historically delineated.
(4) The power of worldliness to dry up human sympathy exemplified in the Gergesenes sending Jesus away from their coasts.
(5) The power of Christ in delivering us from the power of evil involves grateful obligations-Go home to thy friends, etc. This is the true method of spreading the gospel. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.)
Demoniacal possession
The four evangelists give themselves very little concern about pathology and diagnosis, although one of them was a physician. But taking the Gospels as an honest and not unintelligent record of the phenomena, we make out two points very clearly concerning this demonism.
I. It was not mere lunacy or epilepsy, for these diseases are recognized and clearly distinguished from the work of the evil spirits. There are patients in whom the work of the infesting spirit produces symptoms like epilepsy, and other patients in whom it produces symptoms of dumbness, and there are still other manifestations, but beneath these symptoms they detect indications, which the sufferer himself confirms, of something different from the mere physical diseases of like symptoms by which these eases were surrounded.
II. As this demonism was not mere disease, so, on the other hand, it was not mere wickedness-the wilful giving up of ones self to the instigation of the devil-a mistake to which we are inclined by the unhappy mistranslation of demon into devil. It is always spoken of and dealt with as an involuntary affliction, looked upon by the Lord with pity rather than censure. Neither is it treated as if it were in any special sense a visitation for sin. Doubtless these sufferers were sinners, and doubtless their sufferings stood in some relation to their sins, but it was not this relation, that they were sinners above all others. The truth seems to be this: that sin, unbelief, opened the way for this awful curse, and that when the alien spirit had taken hold of body and mind and will, it had the power of plaguing with various disorders-with wild, moping, melancholic madness, or with epileptic convulsions, or blindness, or dumbness. Both the disciples and the evangelists, and even the popular apprehension of the Jews, distinguished clearly between such of these maladies as were merely physical, and such as were inflicted by malign spirits. (L. W. Bacon.)
Christ and the demoniac
From this strange but suggestive incident we may learn-
I. The immediate connection of the world of darkness with the evil heart. Today men break through moral and social restraints, and with else unaccountable recklessness destroy their every interest; suffer disgrace, lose their situations, break up their homes, and for a mess of pottage sacrifice all their hopes in life. Human passion, or even selfishness, is no explanation of such follies. They have a demon; they are possessed.
II. The great power of the inhabitants of darkness over the evil heart. To drive men from the comforts of an honourable life, and to lead them to seek happiness in vagrancy; to make them think they are all right, though daubed with dirt and pollution; to cause men who are sane in the ordinary affairs of life to frequent such places and cherish such companions as reveal to others their moral madness.
III. The utter impotency of man to deliver the possessed from the power of the inhabitants of darkness.
IV. The weakness of the powers of darkness in conflict with Christ. A legion of demons expelled by a word!
V. Conclusion.
1. Beware of tampering with evil. The little sin may open the door of the heart for the entrance of a whole legion of demons.
2. The wish of evil will ever be self-destructive.
3. If Jesus has cured you, show it by causing joy and gladness where you have caused so much misery-in your home. (F. Wallace.)
The demoniac of Gadara
I. The misery of the man.
II. The majesty of Christ.
III. The mischief of the devils. (J. B.)
The Gadarene demoniac
1. That there are ether intelligent and finite creatures beside men.
2. Some of these are wholly wicked, while others are wholly good.
3. Wicked spirits can tempt men to sin.
4. Yet it is conceivable that in some instances they should acquire an absolute physical control over a human being, so as to coerce him irresistibly and make him act against his own will.
5. Cases of possession were peculiarly numerous at the time of Christs ministry upon earth.
Lessons:
1. See the exceeding terribleness of sin, in ruining two orders of creatures and making one the means of ruin to the other.
2. Be thankful to be saved from the physical tyranny of the devil. He would make us all howling demoniacs if he could: but he is restrained by the power and interference of Jesus Christ.
3. Consider the dreadful doom of sinners who hereafter will be absolutely under the power of evil spirits. Hell is a pandemonium of devils, and a bedlam of demoniacs.
4. As still subject to the moral temptations of the evil one, look stedfastly to Jesus, who has power to bring you off more than conqueror in every conflict with the powers of darkness. (Congregational Pulpit.)
Sin and salvation
I. Some aspects of sin.
1. Its contagiousness. The man was possessed. Evil is always reaching beyond itself for something of which it may lay hold, and which it may drag downwards.
2. Its anti-social tendency. Neither abode in any house, but in the tombs. Iniquity isolates men, as ferocity does the wolf, the tiger, the eagle.
3. Its embrutalization of character.
(1) Evidenced in the man; naked, dwelling like a beast amongst the caves: about two thousand demons dwelling in one man!
(2) Evidenced in the evil spirits. Spirits, who had been inhabitants of heaven, fallen so low that they desire to take up their abode in the swine I
4. Its dread of righteousness. The devils cry out when Christ draws near. Always vice fears and hates virtue.
II. Some aspects of salvation.
1. It is begun in the expulsion (not repression) of evil principles and desires.
2. God accounts as nothing whatever material loss may be incurred in its effectuation. Souls are more to Him than swine.
3. Its moral and spiritual results have a counterpart, and external evidence in improved material and social condition. Clothed, etc.
4. The surest proof of the reality of its accomplishment is renunciation of personal preferences in obedience to Christs command. Not my will, but Thine be done. (The Pulpit Analyst.)
The evil spirits
I. The personality of evil spirits: or, in other words, that they are distinct personal beings. For every feature of the narrative bespeaks their true personality. Their first meeting with our Lord; their direct perception that He was their great antagonist; that He was man, and yet that in some way He was the Son of the most high God: that He was of the race over whom they had of old triumphed, and yet that He was their judge; their trembling entreaty that the appointed time of their full sorrow might not be forestalled:-all of these bespeak the manifest meeting of the person of the Christ with the person of the evil one. For all parts of this narrative are equally incompatible with the supposed solution of imaginative language; and all equally agree with the simple meaning of the declaration, that these spirits were separate, lost, personal beings, under whose strange and cruel power the demoniac had been brought. But, above all, this is so clearly established by their entering into the swine, that it furnishes us with the most probable reason for that permission.
II. And as their personality, so, further, their great number is established by this history. Their name was Legion, for many devils had entered into this single victim: a clear intimation of the exhaustless multitude of these hosts of darkness.
III. Again, concerning their condition we may gather much. For their meeting with Christ, as it called forth their name, so did it compel the disclosure of their state. We see them wandering restlessly over the earth, held even now in the strong chain of an ever present despair, and looking on to the full accomplishment of their appointed punishment. So that their present condition is plainly one of active, unresting, sinful misery; their hell is already within them, though its outer bars close not utterly around them until the accomplishment of all things.
IV. And in this condition their power is manifestly great. The strength which they administered to this their victim, by which chains had been plucked asunder by him, and fetters broken in pieces, was but the outward exhibition of the awful might with which he was himself subdued to their will. For what is meant by their entering into him, save that they had the mastery over him; that his spirit was controlled by theirs, so that his outer actions were now the coming forth of an evil power within him? In this sense they had entered into him. But it is as plain that this power, great as it was, was limited; for they could do no more than they were suffered.
V. And but for this gracious help of the Almighty, surely man would be swept away before the flood of their bitter hatred; for we may see here their malignity as plainly as their power. These wretched men, with their foul haunt amidst the pollutions of the tomb, who wore no clothes, but were always night and day crying out and cutting themselves with stones; how plainly do they bear their witness to the character of Satans rule! What else was all this their proclaimed misery but the evident display, in those given over utterly to him, of the true working of that will of his which is now making men sensual, and brutish, and violent, and fierce, and dark in spirit! The pleasant baits of sin are cast aside as soon as they have served their turn, and an absolute malignity seeks to overwhelm his prey with unmixed misery. Surely the tender mercies of that wicked one are cruel; he hates God without measure, and therefore hates in man even the obscured image of his heavenly Father. What a fearful intimation is all this of what hell shall be, where there shall be no limitation to his power of tormenting those who heretofore have joined him in rebellion, and thereby made him master over them! Lessons: And, first, we may see here the greatness of our redeemed life. Every one of us, how narrow soever be his sphere, is, as it were the champion of the great King. There is a mighty warfare raging throughout all His wide dominions. The hosts are gathered for the battle. An expectant world is looking on. Not men only, but all the armies of heaven, are ranged on this side and on that. Our common temptations, they are these times of trial. In them we either maintain Gods truth, or go basely over to His enemies. And if there be this greatness in our redeemed life, let us see next its fearfulness. For who are we that we should have to face these mighty ones, thus armed with power, thus inevitable in presence, thus skilled in the arts of the destroyer, thus malignant, numerous, nimble, and daring from the blackness of despair and the bitterness of hatred? Surely, then, our life, which leads us into the midst of them, must be fearful. Can it be safe for such men as we are to be sleepy and careless; to be ungirded, as those who live for pleasure; unarmed, as those who loll idly, courting ease or slumber? But once more; see not only the greatness and the fearfulness of the life which, in this view, we are leading, but see also its blessedness and true security. There is, indeed, this enemy to meet; our temptations to common sins involve this mighty struggle as coming from him; but there is also great joy even in this very thought; for as we cannot doubt the presence of evil, surely it is a blessed thing to know that it is thus a temptation cast in from without; that it is not necessarily part of us. God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it (1Co_10:13). We are Christs soldiers, will He suffer us to perish? let us look at His cross, that we may deem better of His love. We know not how greatly we are every day protected by His present might; we know not how He has already succoured us; how He has curbed the power of the enemy; we know not how to measure aright the common blessing of being in His Church, amongst His saints, where the power of Satan even now is manifestly bound and straitened; we cannot tell from what bodily inflictions, from what mental struggles, from what fearful falls He has actually kept us. (Bishop Wilberforce.)
Nature sitting at the feet of Jesus
I. The difficulty felt by some, and expressed by not a few, as to there being or not being any real distinction between what are called demonical possessions in the new testament and mania, or maladies of various sorts and degrees of intensity.
1. They are distinct and separate things (Mat_4:24; Mat_8:16; Mar_1:32).
2. The language of our Lord on the occasion of His casting out devils is such as to warrant us in concluding that it was an actual or literal demoniacal possession. The theory of Strauss and the Rationalistic school.
3. These demoniacs were not necessarily, or in every instance, the guiltiest of men, but they were in all instances the unhappiest of men. There was a groaning under the tyranny they endured.
4. There seemed to have been two wills in the person-the will of the victim, and the will of the spirit driving him wherever he would.
II. A few reasons for supposing that demoniac possessions may have ceased, and some reasons for believing it may still continue.
1. If demoniac possessions were in those days, how is it that demoniac possessions are not now? How is it that epidemics that existed once do not exist now? etc.
2. Why does God suffer it to be so? The answer to that difficulty is, that we know very little why evil was introduced, we know not why evil is continued, etc. Evil is not unripe good, as Emerson and others of his school allege.
3. Another reason why demoniac possessions may have ceased is, that Satan, beyond all dispute, at our Redeemers birth, and at our Redeemers atonement, received a blow from which he has never recovered.
4. And there remains this fact, too-whatever God does in the world, Satan always gets up something very like it, because his hope of progress is by deception.
III. The special and individual portrait sketched in the text.
1. The most awful specimen of demoniacal possession that we can well imagine.
2. It is very remarkable to notice the contrast in his character-the bureau in its agony, groaning to be delivered, and the fiendish in its depravity, imploring to be let alone.
3. It appears that when Jesus drew near to the man he was not delivered of the demons instantly, but underwent a tremendous paroxysm of suffering and distress.
4. The prayer of the demons occasion a great deal of difficulty and of scoffing (confer Luk_8:31). It seems to us a mystery that Christ should answer the prayer of the demons at all. If there is any other way of disposing of them, why let the demons take possession of the swine, and why let the swine be thus destroyed?
5. The Gadarenes also presented a petition to Christ; and what is that petition? (Mar_5:17.) Strange, startling, painful fact! And yet it is possible for us to imitate their example. (J. Cumming, D. D.)
The Gadarene demoniac
I. Human efforts exerted. Picture his state. He was a pest to his family and the city. So are great sinners, who are the devils instruments for disturbing society. Something must be done. But what? Men can think only of fetters, etc. They did all that they had the wit to devise, or the power to accomplish. Perhaps congratulated themselves on baying done so much. Notice modern human restraints. Law, prisons, reformatories, policemen, and punishments. Besides these there are public opinion, fashion, custom. These are often used to keep the unruly in check. Suitable efforts employed among children. Parental restraints (Psa_32:9) hence (Lam_3:27).
II. Human efforts frustrated. No restraints could be found that were strong enough. Apply this and the personal injuries received to the case of those, especially children and young people, who break through restraints. He cut himself with the rocks; they are injured by contact with evil companions, bad habits, etc. Liberty only good for those who have some power of self-control. Observe how futile are human efforts in restraining sin. What multitudes break through every restraint! This to be prevented, not by strengthening the bonds, but by removing the inclination. This was what Jesus did.
III. Human efforts superseded. Jesus did not rebuke those who had done their best, but He did something better. He exorcised the evil spirit. The man was at once reduced to tractability; tamed without a fetter. Power of evil spirits illustrated by the fate of the swine. Superior value of the man proved by the permitted destruction of the swine, so the man might be saved. Selfishness of the Gadarenes illustrates that of the world in general, who would rather preserve personal property than sacrifice it for the religious and permanent good of man.
Learn-
I. The malignity, power, craft, and blindness of evil spirits.
II. The wretched state, personally and relatively, of man under their influence.
III. The utter helplessness of the best-concerted human means for the restraint of evil.
IV. The sufficiency of the word of Jesus (Col_2:15). (C. Gray.)
Our great enemy
From this history we learn three truths of great importance.
I. That the devil is a spirit of great malice and power.
II. That both his malice and his power are altogether under the government of God.
III. That God often permits him to do great mischief, for the profit of worldly men and for the trial of the faith of good men. (Bishop Wilson.)
The demoniac of Gergesa
I. The Gergesene in bondage. Was he not a free man, one who would not be bound by others-would go his own way? Yet he was a miserable slave (Mar_5:15-18). Here was one who seemed to be free, yet was really a slave.
II. How the Gergesene was rescued. Could not escape himself-the evil spirit too strong. Friends could not rescue him. Hopeless until someone stronger than the devils should come-then deliverance (compare Luk_11:21-22). Jesus not only stronger than one evil spirit-an army of them here (Mar_5:9). Yet see His supremacy.
1. They could go nowhere against His will.
2. Besought Him.
3. Even when He defeated them.
III. The Gergesene at liberty.
1. Is it like a free man to be sitting at anothers feet like that?
2. What does he ask of Jesus? Would it be freedom to have to follow another everywhere?
3. Jesus gives him an order; is that like liberty, to obey it so implicitly? Yes, for it is his own free choice to be, like St. Paul afterwards, the slave of Christ (Rom_1:1). (E. Stock.)
Sin destructive
Satans work is a work of destruction. Nearly seven hundred years ago, Jenghis Khan swept over Central Asia, and it is said that, for centuries after, his course could he traced by the pyramids of human bones-the bones of slaughtered captives-which his armies left behind them. If the bones of Satans slain captives could be piled up in our sight, what a pyramid that would be! Self-mutilation has always been common among the worshippers of false gods; to this day the fakirs of India cut and gash themselves with knives. The devil sets his servants at the same unprofitable task. Alo-ed-Din, the chief of the Assassins, succeeded in persuading his men that whoever would fall in his service was sure of Paradise; and so, at a nod of their chief, the poor dupes would stab themselves to the heart, or fling themselves over precipices. Satans one aim is to blind his captives and lead them to self-destruction. (Sunday School Times.)
A man in ruins
Can anything be more sad than the wreck of a man? We mourn over the destruction of many noble things that have existed in the world. Men, when they hear of the old Phidian Jupiter-that sat forty feet high, carved of ivory and gold, and that was so magnificent, so transcendent, that all the ancient world counted him unhappy that died without having seen this most memorable statue that ever existed in the world-often mourn to think that its exceeding value led to its destruction, and that it perished. It was a great loss to art that such a thing should perish. Can any man look upon the Acropolis-shattered with balls, crumbled by the various influences of the elements, and utterly destroyed-and not mourn to think that such a stately temple, a temple so unparalleled in its exquisite symmetry and beauty, should be desolate and scattered? Can there be anything more melancholy than the destruction, not only of such temples as the Acropolis and the Parthenon, but of a whole city of temples and statues? More melancholy than the destruction of a statue, or a temple, or a city, or a nation, in its physical aspects, is the destruction of a man, the wreck of the understanding, the ruin of the moral feelings, the scattering all abroad of those elements of power that, united together, make man fitly the noblest creature that walks on the earth. Thousands and thousands of men make foreign pilgrimages to visit and mourn over fallen and destroyed cities of former grandeur and beauty; and yet, all round about every one of us, in every street, and in almost every neighbourhood, there are ruins more stupendous, more pitiful, and more heart-touching than that of any city. And how strange would be the wonder if, as men wandered in the Orient, there should come someone that should call from the mounds all the scattered ruins of Babylon, or build again Tadmor of the desert! How strange it would be to see a city, that at night was a waste heap, so restored that in the morning the light of the sun should flash from pinnacle, and tower, and wall, and roof! How marvellous would be that creative miracle! But more marvellous, ten thousand times, is that Divine touch by which a man, broken down and shattered, is raised up in his right mind, and made to sit, clothed, at the feet of Jesus. (H. W. Beecher.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain Chapter 5
Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5:1-20 (Mar_5:1-20)
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THE DEMONIAC OF GADARA
"And they came to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gerasenes. And when he was come out of the boat, straightway there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling in the tombs: and no man could any more bind him, no, not with a chain; because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been rent asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: and no man had strength to tame him. And always, night and day, in the tombs and in the mountains, he was crying out, and cutting himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshipped Him; and crying out with a loud voice, he saith, What have I to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of the Most High God? I adjure Thee by God, torment me not. For He said unto him, Come forth, thou unclean spirit, out of the man. And He asked him, What is thy name? And he saith unto Him, My name is Legion; for we are many. And he besought Him much that He would not send them away out of the country. Now there was there on the mountain side a great herd of swine feeding. And they besought Him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And He gave them leave. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered into the swine: and the herd rushed down the steep into the sea, in number about two thousand; and they were choked in the sea. And they that fed them fled, and told it in the city, and in the country. And they came to see what it was that had come to pass. And they come to Jesus, and behold him that was possessed with devils sitting, clothed and in his right mind, even him that had the legion: and they were afraid. And they that saw it declared unto them how it befell him that was possessed with devils, and concerning the swine. And they began to beseech Him to depart from their borders. And as He was entering into the boat, he that had been possessed with devils besought Him that he might be with Him. And He suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go to thy house unto thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and how He had mercy on thee. And he went his way, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel." Mar_5:1-20 (R.V.)
FRESH from asserting His mastery over winds and waves, the Lord was met by a more terrible enemy, the rage of human nature enslaved and impelled by the cruelty of hell. The place where He landed was a theatre not unfit for the tragedy which it revealed. A mixed race was there, indifferent to religion, rearing great herds of swine, upon which the law looked askance, but the profits of which they held so dear that they would choose to banish a Divine ambassador, and one who had released them from an incessant peril, rather than be deprived of these. Now it has already been shown that the wretches possessed by devils were not of necessity stained with special guilt. Even children fell into this misery. But yet we should expect to find it most rampant in places where God was dishonored, in Gerasa and in the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And it is so. All misery is the consequence of sin, although individual misery does not measure individual guilt. And the places where the shadow of sin has fallen heaviest are always the haunts of direst wretchedness.
The first Gospel mentions two demoniacs, but one was doubtless so pre-eminently fierce, and possibly so zealous afterward in proclaiming his deliverance, that only St. Matthew learned the existence of another, upon whom also Satan had wrought, if not his worst, enough to show his hatred, and the woes he would fain bring upon humanity.
Among the few terrible glimpses given us of the mind of the fallen angels, one is most significant and sinister. When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, to what haunts does he turn? He has no sympathy with what is lovely or sublime: in search of rest he wanders through dry places, deserts of arid sand in which his misery may be soothed by congenial desolation. Thus the ruins of the mystic Babylon become an abode of devils. And thus the unclean spirit, when he mastered this demoniac, drove him to a foul and dreary abode among the tombs. One can picture the victim in some lucid moment, awakening to consciousness only to shudder in his dreadful home, and scared back again into that ferocity which is the child of terror.
"Is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place.
. ? . ? . ? . ? . ? .
Oh! if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears?"
Romeo and Juliet, 4. 3.
There was a time when he had been under restraint, but "now no man could any more bind him" even with iron upon feet and wrists. The ferocity of his cruel subjugator turned his own strength against himself, so that night and day his howling was heard, as he cut himself with stones, and his haunts in the tombs and in the mountains were as dangerous as the lair of a wild beast, which no man dared pass by. What strange impulse drove him thence to the feet of Jesus? Very dreadful is the picture of his conflicting tendencies; the fiend within him struggling against something still human and attracted by the Divine, so that he runs from afar, yet cries aloud, and worships yet disowns having anything to do with Him; and as if the fiend had subverted the true personality, and become the very man, when ordered to come out he adjures Jesus to torment him not.
And here we observe the knowledge of Christ's rank possessed by the evil ones. Long before Peter won a special blessing for acknowledging the Son of the living God, the demoniac called Him by the very name which flesh and blood did not reveal to Cephas. For their chief had tested and discovered Him in the wilderness, saying twice with dread surmise, If Thou be the Son of God. It is also noteworthy that the phrase, the most High God, is the name of Jehovah among the non-Jewish races. It occurs in both Testaments in connection with Melchizedek the Canaanite. It is used throughout the Babylonian proclamations in the book of Daniel. Micah puts it into the lips of Balaam. And the damsel with a spirit of divination employed it in Philippi. Except once, in a Psalm which tells of the return of apostate Israel to the Most High God (Psa_78:35), the epithet is used only in relation with the nations outside the covenant. Its occurrence here is probably a sign of the pagan influences by which Gadara was infected, and for which it was plagued.
By the name of God then, whose Son he loudly confessed that Jesus was, the fiend within the man adjures Him to torment hem not. But Jesus had not asked to be acknowledged; He had bidden the devil to come out. And persons who substitute loud confessions and clamorous orthodoxies for obedience should remember that so did the fiend of Gadara. Jesus replied by asking, What is thy name? The question was not an idle one, but had a healing tendency. For the man was beside himself: it was part of his cure that he was found "in his right mind;" and meanwhile his very consciousness was merged in that of the fiends who tortured him, so that his voice was their voice, and they returned a vaunting answer through his lips. Our Lord sought therefore both to calm his excitement and to remind him of himself, and of what he once had been before evil beings dethroned his will. These were not the man, but his enemies by whom he was "carried about," and very literally "'possessed." And it is always sobering to think of "Myself," the lonely individual, apart from even those who most influence me, with a soul to lose or save. With this very question the Church Catechism begins its work of arousing and instructing the conscience of each child, separating him from his fellows in order to lead him on to the knowledge of the individualizing grace of God.
It may be that the fiends within him dictated his reply, or that he himself, conscious of their tyranny, cried out in agony, We are many; a regiment like those of conquering Rome, drilled and armed to trample and destroy, a legion. This answer distinctly contravened what Christ had just implied, that he was one, an individual, and precious in his Maker's eyes. But there are men and women in every Christian land, whom it might startle to look within, and see how far their individuality is oppressed and overlaid by a legion of impulses, appetites, and conventionalities, which leave them nothing personal, nothing essential and characteristic, nothing that deserves a name. The demons, now conscious of the power which calls them forth, besought Him to leave them a refuge in that country. St. Luke throws light upon this petition, as well as their former complaint, when he tells us they feared to be sent to "the abyss" or their final retribution. And as we read of men who are haunted by a fearful looking for of judgment and a fierceness of fire, so they had no hope of escape, except until "the time." For a little respite they prayed to be sent even into the swine, and Jesus gave them leave.
What a difference there is between the proud and heroic spirits whom Milton celebrated, and these malignant but miserable beings, haunting the sepulchers like ghosts, truculent and yet dastardly, as ready to supplicate as to rend, filled with dread of the appointed time and of the abyss, clinging to that outlying country as a congenial haunt, and devising for themselves a last asylum among the brutes. And yet they are equally far from the materialistic superstitions of that age and place; they are not amenable to fumigations or exorcisms, and they do not upset the furniture in rushing out. Many questions have been asked about the petition of the demons and our Lord's consent. But none of them need much distress the reverential enquirer, who remembers by what misty horizons all our knowledge is enclosed. Most absurd is the charge that Jesus acted indefensibly in destroying property. Is it then so clear that the owners did not deserve their loss through the nature of their investments? Was it merely as a man, or as the Son of the living God, that His consent was felt to be necessary? Was it any part of His mission to protect brutes from death? Was the ocular evidence of deliverance, thus given to the demoniac, worth less than the property which it cost?
The loss endured was no greater than when a crop is beaten down by hail, or a vineyard devastated by insects, and in these cases an agency beyond the control of man is sent or permitted by God, Who was in Christ.
A far harder question it is, How could devils enter into brute creatures? and again, Why did they desire to do so? But the first of these is only a subdivision of the vaster problem, at once inevitable and insoluble, How does spirit in any of its forms animate matter, or even manipulate it? We know not by what strange link a thought contracts a sinew, and transmutes itself into words or deeds. And if we believe the dread and melancholy fact of the possession of a child by a fiend, what reason have we, beyond prejudice, for doubting the possession of swine? It must be observed also, that no such possession is proved by this narrative to be a common event, but the reverse. The notion is a last and wild expedient of despair, proposing to content itself with the uttermost abasement, if only the demons might still haunt the region where they had thriven so well. And the consent of Jesus does not commit Him to any judgment upon the merit or the possibility of the project. He leaves the experiment to prove itself, exactly as when Peter would walk upon the water; and a laconic "Go" in this case recalls the "Come" in that; an assent, without approval, to an attempt which was about to fail. Not in the world of brutes could they find shelter from the banishment they dreaded; for the whole herd, frantic and ungoverned, rushed headlong into the sea and was destroyed. The second victory of the series was thus completed. Jesus was Master over the evil spirits which afflict humanity, as well as over the fierceness of the elements which rise against us.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 1. They came to the other side. After the…
1. They came to the other side. After the storm. Into the country of the Gerasenes. Matthew in the parallel account says Gadarenes. The explanation is easy. Gerasa, a town whose modern name is Gersa, stood on the southeast shore of the sea, while Gadara, the chief city of the district, was south about seven or eight miles. As the capital city of the district, “the country of the Gadarenes” embraced Gerasa and its vicinity.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Mar_5:1. Gadarenes.—Gerasenes is undoubtedly the true reading here, and…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mar_5:1. Gadarenes.—Gerasenes is undoubtedly the true reading here, and in Origen’s time it was the prevalent one; “but the copyists, thinking this referred to the well-known Gerasa in Gilead, and knowing that the miracle could not have occurred there, at a distance of twenty miles from the Sea of Galilee, altered it to ‘Gadarenes,’ since at Gadara there were the ‘tombs,’ and other particulars of the miracle, and it might easily be supposed that the whole district took its name from this chief city. Gadara is a little over six miles from the lake. As for the reading ‘Gergesenes,’ we owe it either to Origen’s own conjecture, or else Gergesa was a dialectic variety of the name Gerasa.” To Dr. Thomson we owe the discovery of the real site. “It is,” he says, “within a few rods of the shore, and an immense mountain rises directly above it, in which are ancient tombs.… The lake is so near the base of the mountain, that the swine rushing madly down it could not stop, but would be hurried on into the water.… The name, pronounced by Bedouin Arabs, is so similar to Gergesa, that, to all my inquiries for the place, they invariably said it was at Chersa; and they insisted that they were identical.” See The Land and the Book, pp. 375–378.
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Mar_5:2. A man.—Matthew (Mat_8:28) mentions two men. Mark and Luke speak only of the better known or fiercer of the two, who probably acted as spokesman for both.
Mar_5:5. Cutting.—Or, beating.
Mar_5:7.—See note on chap Mar_1:24.
Mar_5:9. Legion.—Cp. Mat_12:45; Luk_8:2.
Mar_5:15. Clothed.—He had been wont to wear no upper garment (Luk_8:27), and doubtless such clothes as he had were very ragged.
Mar_5:20. Decapolis.—The district of the ten cities, lying for the most part east of the Jordan, and east and south-east of the Sea of Tiberias. Its ten cities were Scythopolis (the only one on the west of Jordan), Hippos, Gadara, Pella, Philadelphia, Geresa, Dion, Canatha, Raphana, Damascus.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mar_5:1-20
(PARALLELS: Mat_8:28-34; Luk_8:26-39.)
Christ and the Gadarenes.—
I. The Gadarene demoniac.—
1. What was the nature of the so-called “demonism” of the New Testament? It is nowhere said there concerning any one that he was possessed of the devil. In one passage only (Act_10:38) mention is made of the healing of “all that were oppressed of the devil.” But in all other like passages there is no mention made of “the devil,” but of “unclean spirits” or “demons.”
2. A second point of difficulty that troubles some people is that this describing of a malady as if it were the infestation of some living thing that had entered into the person seems so like the relic of a barbarous and superstitious pathology, which ascribes all sicknesses to such a cause. To which we may make either of two answers:
(1) That if this description of certain maladies as wrought by evil spirits is a survival of the superstitious notion that all maladies were so caused, it may be a survival of just so much in that notion as was true and ought to survive. Or,
(2) That if barbarism and superstition used to allege that all human diseases are produced by the agency of living beings invisible to the ordinary sight entering into the patient, then barbarism and superstition are in pretty good company, considering that the very latest word of the most advanced pathological science comes out at precisely the same point.
3. Why are there no cases of demonism in our own times?
(1) It is not certain that there are no such cases now. There are many who insist, with a very formidable array of evidence in favour of their claim, that cases of possession by spirits, clean or unclean, are peculiarly frequent in these days.
(2) If no cases just like what are described in the Gospels are recognised in modern pathology, this is no more than might be expected from analogy. It is one of the commonest maxims of medical science that the type of diseases changes from age to age. For my part, I find it nothing unlikely that in an age like that of the coming of our Lord, when a decisive conflict was impending between the kingdom of evil and the kingdom of heaven, those maladies that involve the mind and soul, and indicate the presence of some mischievous spiritual agency, should be found to take on a character of pecular malignity.
4. Taking the Gospels as an honest and not unintelligent record of the phenomena, we make out two points very clearly concerning this demonism:
(1) It was not mere lunacy or epilepsy, for these diseases are recognised and clearly distinguished from the work of the evil spirits.
(2) As this demonism was not mere disease, so, on the other hand, it was not mere wickedness—the wilful giving up one’s self to the instigation of the devil. It is always spoken of and dealt with as an involuntary affliction, looked upon by the Lord with pity rather than censure. Neither is it treated as if it were, in any special sense, a visitation for sin.
5. The truth seems to be this: that sin, unbelief, ungodliness, opened the way for this awful curse, and that, when the alien spirit had taken hold of body and mind and will, it had the power of plaguing with various disorders—with wild, moping, melancholic madness, or with epileptic convulsions, or blindness, or dumbness.
6. The startling and unearthly fact, in the words and actions of the demoniac, is the presence in him of a double consciousness and will. He is torn with discordant desires, and tossed to and fro between conflicting passions. Physicians who have studied the horrible symptoms of delirium tremens describe the sort of double consciousness that sometimes characterises its wretched victims, in terms which remind us of this demonism described by the Evangelists.
7. As to the spirits themselves, we get some hints of their ways here and elsewhere in the New Testament. They are represented as wandering uneasy and restless until they can find lodgment in some human body and soul, it may be; if not there, then anywhere, even in a swine’s carcass—some living organism of which they can take possession, and there work their malignant will. The unclean spirit beds itself luxuriously in the consciousness and thoughts and members of its victims, and loathes to be dispossessed. Like certain noxious tropical insects, it sinks its feelers and tentacles into the flesh, so that to tear it away is like tearing the flesh away from itself. To leave it there is torture, and to remove it is worse torture; so that the patient rushes to the surgeon, and, when the surgeon puts forth his hand to heal him, it is as if victim and tormentor shrank away together, crying: “Let me alone! I beseech thee, torment me not!” Now is it any dark parable to you, that I should need explain how like this is to the possession which sin takes of the mind?—how evil thoughts and passions and purposes, for which the soul was not made, but which are alien to its Divine constitution in God’s image, do root themselves like a morbid growth into its very substance, till the soul, bewildered at the unnatural conflict within itself, cries out against the power of sin, craving to be delivered, and then, when the Deliverer comes near, cries out again, with a loud voice: “What have I to do with Thee, Jesus, Son of God most high? I beseech Thee, torment me not!”
8. What help is there for the soul that is in such a plight—the will, the motives, the desires, the active faculties, all that should co-operate in the effort of self-healing, themselves implicated in the disease, so that even when deliverance is brought nigh it will none of it, but warns the Saviour away? It will, and yet it will not. The consciousness of need and danger are of no avail; even faith and prayer bring no help, for there is no prayer but with a reservation—let not the double-minded man think that he shall receive anything from the Lord. So Augustine prayed, “Save me, O Lord, save me,—but not now.” O helpless man, the hope for you is that God will be to you better than your prayers, will do for you exceeding abundantly above that you ask,—that when you pray, “Save me, but not now,” He will answer, “Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation: look unto Me now and be saved.” Be not afraid to come near your Lord and Saviour, even though the sin that is in you, the evil thoughts, the demoniac passions, cry out against your prayers and say, “Let us alone! torment us not! depart from us! what have we do with Thee, Jesus, Son of the most high God?” Doubt not that the compassionate Lord will be more ready to hear this craving of your better nature than the clamour of a legion of evil spirits, and that, if you will but suffer Him, He will deliver you from your worse self; He will command the inward discord of your mind to cease, and make the storm a calm; and you, even though it be not without sore rendings from the retreating fiend, shall at last sit peaceful at the feet of your Redeemer, clothed and in your right mind.
II. The gospel among the Gadarenes.—
1. You may be at a loss, perhaps, to see any good reason why the healing of the wretched man possessed of demons should have been an occasion of terror to the people of the neighbourhood. It might seem more reasonable that they should have found it rather an immense relief to their fears, when the frightful creature that had been the terror of that part of the country, whose horrible frenzies had made the road that led by his cave impassable, so that they took long circuits to avoid him, was found by them sitting as quiet as a good child, at the feet of Jesus, trying to learn something of God and truth and duty, and of who this wonderful Saviour was—this destroyer of the works of the devil. What good reason could they find, in all that they had heard, for sending Jesus out from their borders? What good reason? Ah! but this is asking too much—to look for a good reason for a wrong action. It is the very nature of sin to be unreasonable. Its reasons are no reasons. We may look for the motives of it, and for the excuses for it. But in giving reasons for wrong conduct, we cannot go much further than to shew that it is like the conduct of human nature in general under like circumstances. And we do not pretend to justify human nature. Why should Adam and Eve be afraid when they heard the voice of the Lord God in the garden? Why should Moses be afraid and hide his face when the Lord spoke to him out of the burning bush, and said, “I am the God of thy father”? Why should Isaiah, when he saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up, cry out, “Woe is me, for I am undone, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts”? It is in human nature, somehow, account for it as you may, that men do not like to come quite so near to God. It is not only that they shrink from the manifestation of the Divine anger—that would be intelligible enough; but men do not like such close dealings with God anyway. In fact, anything that brings them close, face to face with the powers of the unseen world is a thing that men in general shrink from. It is the one labour of the ministry of the gospel to persuade men to come near enough to God to know Him—to look Christ in the face long enough to know Him. Dr. H. A. Boardman wrote a little book entitled The Great Question; and when you looked within to see what “the great question” was, you found it nothing but this—“Will you consider the subject of personal religion?” And why should not any man—every man—say yes to this Great Question? But they will not. The complaint of the old prophet is the complaint of the modern preacher—“My people will not consider.” Our lips frame words of welcome and praise; but our hearts are all the time silently pleading with Him to “let us alone,” and depart out of our coasts, even though we would shrink from putting such a thought into words. We feel easier with a legion of malignant demons near us, than with one faithful and merciful and holy Saviour.
2. The second topic of consultation among the Gadarenes was this: “concerning the swine.” I do believe (to do these people justice) that if we could have been there, and could have charged them to the face with having deliberately rejected Christ, wilfully driven away the Great Healer, simply on account of their interest in pork-raising, they would indignantly and sincerely have repelled the imputation, and have suggested a number of other reasons by which they supposed they were actuated, instead of the one which really affected and decided their minds. I do not believe they said explicitly to each other, “This is a great and Divine work of mercy. God Himself is manifest here destroying the works of the devil, and delivering our fellow-man from bondage to unclean spirits. Surely the kingdom of God is come nigh unto us! But then, on the other hand, see what it costs; two thousand head of pork is a great deal to lose, and we will not have God’s kingdom.” I do not believe they said this; I do not believe they distinctly thought it; but they did it. And you, beware how you put yourself under the same condemnation. For you need not expect that the gospel of salvation will ever come to you without bringing along with it some conditions of loss and self-denial. It will interfere with your plans, break up your arrangements, frustrate your schemes, in business, in politics, in society, in the conduct of life. That petty fraud—that adulteration or misrepresentation, so common that no one thinks of it—that smart, lying advertisement that you have got in your desk ready for the press—those keen little tricks or disingenuous compliances in politics that are to carry the caucus or the election and put you into office and keep you there—those shams and deceits, that neglect of homely duties and of wearying charities, by which you are studying to gain social position and pleasure,—how these herds of unclean things, the soilure and blemish of your lives, will have to rush off into the sea, if the Holy Christ is to come to you and live with you! Are you ready to let them go, or will you rather come and pray the Lord to depart out of your neighbourhood?
III. The apostle to the Gadarenes.—There, away up the hillside, the angry crowd are lingering yet. They have carried their point, and the Saviour whom they have rejected has turned to leave them;—it is so easy to be rid of Jesus if you will. Downward He goes in sorrow to the beach where the little shallop lies rocking in the sands, and timidly in the rear comes this new disciple with only one humble petition—“that he might be with Him.” “Go home to thy friends!” “But, Lord, I have no friend but Thee. I have been an outcast now these many years, a dweller in unclean sepulchres, abhorred of men. What have men done for me but bind me in chains and fetters of iron? But ‘Thy hand hath loosed my bonds of pain, and bound me with Thy love!’ Let me be with Thee where Thou art!” But still from that Most Gracious One comes the inexorable, “Go back—back to thy friends and thy father’s house—go tell them what the Lord hath done for thee!” “What? I, Lord? I, so disused to rational speech? whose lips and tongue were but now the organs of demoniac blasphemy? I, just rallying from the rending of the exorcised fiends? I, surrounded by a hostile people, that have just warned away my Lord and Saviour from their coasts? And can I hope that they will hear my words, who turn a deaf and rebellious ear to Thee? Nay, Lord, I entreat Thee let me be with Thee, there sitting at Thy feet clothed and in my right mind, that men may look and point at me and glorify my Lord, my Saviour! Let them go, whose zeal to tell of Thee even Thy interdict cannot repress,—there be many such—send them! But let me be near Thee, be with Thee, and gaze, and love, and be silent, and adore!” Was ever a stronger argument of prayer? And yet Christ departs, and the grateful believer is left alone to do the work for which he seems so insufficient and unfit! To translate the story into the terms of our daily life, it shews us:
1. That the path of duty which Christ has marked out for us may be the opposite of that which we naturally think and ardently desire. You say to yourself that a man must be willing to leave father and mother and children and business for the gospel’s sake: but God finds some way of admonishing you that a man must also be willing to stay by them for the gospel’s sake, when he is called thereto, and answers the fine texts with which you try to excuse yourself from humble and irksome duty with other texts,—how he that provideth not for his own household is worse than an infidel,—and how he makes void the law of God who says to his father or mother Corban—I have consecrated to religious uses the time and labour that might have gone to your support;—and so God shuts up your favourite path of service, and makes plain before your feet a very humble and obscure little by-way for you to walk in.
2. That when religious privilege and religious duty seem to conflict, the duty is to be preferred above the privilege. It would seem as if the case of this lunatic had been set before us here as an a fortiori case for all generations to the end of time. What one of us can ever be called to surrender that supreme religious privilege—the personal, visible companionship, the personal, audible teaching of Jesus the Lord? And if he might not choose, but must needs go away, untaught, untrained, to be alone from his Saviour, and be himself a teacher of others, can there ever be imagined a case between duty and privilege when you or I should be at liberty to hesitate?
3. That duty, preferred and followed instead of privilege, becomes itself the supreme privilege. See to what honour came this nameless man at last. Having given up the infinite delight of the personal companionship of Jesus, behold him now promoted to this dignity, that he should be the first in the kingdom of heaven. The trained disciples, that had left all to follow the Lord, are passed over, and this highest honour, that he should be the first commissioned preacher of the gospel, is given to him who left the Lord Himself, at His command, to do the Lord’s work. And no man knoweth his name unto this day. But in the resurrection those unknown syllables shall be spoken again with “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and shall shine above those of prophets and apostles, like the sun, and like the brightness of the firmament, for ever and ever.—L. W. Bacon.
Mar_5:17. Christ rejected by the Gadarenes.—We are not surprised to learn, that those “in the city and in the country,” when such strange tidings reached them, “went out to see what it was that was done.” We should have so acted ourselves in similar circumstances. Perhaps we think that here the likeness ends; and that, instead of beseeching One who had given such proofs of power and goodness to “depart out of our coasts,” we should rather have imitated the conduct of the people of Sychar (Joh_4:40). In both cases Jesus granted the request made. What the Gadarenes lost by their rejection of Him we may never know; but that their loss may be our gain, let us try to discover the feelings which influenced these persons, and which may still actuate any possessed of the same depraved and disordered moral constitution.
I. Vexation at pecuniary loss sustained.—We may partly excuse this feeling on the ground of its naturalness, but we may not allow it to be a just and right one. We may not admit that ever so large an amount of this world’s goods is to be weighed in the balance against one immortal soul, “turned from darkness to light,” etc. Moreover, the Gadarenes had ample evidence that He who permitted this destruction of property was no ordinary man, for “with authority He commanded the unclean spirits, and they obeyed Him.” He belonged, evidently, to another world. He had passed the boundary which separates things visible from invisible. He must have much to tell, therefore, which is most important for all to know, who are conscious that they possess a spiritual nature. Compared with the benefits which all might expect to reap from His “wisdom and mighty works,” what was the injury which a few had sustained from the loss of a portion of their worldly wealth?
II. The dread of preternatural agency.—“They were afraid” (Mar_5:15). Why, and when? Not when they beheld the traces of the destructive energy which had been at work; but when they saw “him that was possessed … sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind.” Not because they thought he would do them an injury—he was now as harmless as he had heretofore been dangerous; but because they saw in him one who had just been the subject of a preternatural agency, and because the Agent Himself was close at hand. So Peter (Luk_5:8). So all the disciples (Luk_8:25). These Gadarenes had hitherto been living according to the course of this world. Perhaps they professed some form of religion; but it exercised no regenerating influence over their hearts: of the “power of godliness” they knew nothing at all. Probably they had heard a rumour of the “Great Prophet who had risen up” amongst their neighbours; but it had made no particular impression upon them; not one of them thought more of making provision for another life, or less of getting and enjoying the good things of this. Suddenly their carnal ease is broken in upon by the report of the arrival of the new Teacher in their own country, and of the awful display of supernatural power which ensued. The effect was instantaneous. It was like the first warnings of an earthquake—the slight trembling which precedes the more powerful shock which is to bury the city in its own ruins. Not more hastily do the inhabitants, on the first premonitory vibration, rush out of their houses and take refuge in the open country, than did the Gadarenes, with one accord, “pray Jesus to depart out of their coasts.” They desired to have nothing to do with Him. He had already seriously disturbed them; and if He were allowed to go on, who could tell whereunto these things would grow?
III. Consciousness of guilt, and fear of punishment.—Yes, “guilt” is the word, as implying not only wrong, but wrong which must be answered for, wrong which subjects to the penalty of the law. This is what all mankind are alike implicated in. God had not left these Gadarenes without a witness to Him in their own breasts, for He had given them a conscience, and thoughts which accused or excused according to the bidding of that inward monitor. But they, being ignorant of God’s ways, and knowing only that they were “the enemies of God by wicked works,” supposed that He must be their enemy also, and could think of no other way of fleeing from His wrath but by fleeing from Him and from every one who came in His name. What could be more natural? All that they had as yet heard or seen of Jesus only confirmed them in the impression that He was come to torment them before their time, and to bring upon them or their families such swift destruction as had already befallen their swine. We cannot doubt that abject personal fear had the largest share in prompting them to “pray Him to depart out of their coasts.”
Lessons.—
1. Was it the loss of worldly substance which induced the Gadarenes to wish to be rid of Christ’s presence? In this, even knowing no more of Him than they did, they acted foolishly and wickedly. But what must be said of those who know Him to be the Saviour of the world—“the Way, and the Truth, and the Life”—and yet allow worldly considerations to prevent them from reaping the full benefit of His Mission?
2. Did the carnal-minded Gadarenes see in Jesus a messenger from the invisible world, who was come to turn their thoughts from things temporal to things eternal? and did they therefore desire to have nothing to do with Him? This also was inexcusable even in them; but how much more so in us! We cannot plead that it was well with us before this Man of God came among us, and that we desire to “let well alone.” There never was a time when He was not among us—never a time when the name of Jesus, His work and His doctrine, were not familiar to us as household words. “In the light are we, that in us the light may be.” Let us, then, go out to meet “Him that cometh in the name of the Lord,” and pray Him not to depart from us, not to let us alone, but to come unto us, and make His abode with us, for time and for eternity.
3. Did the Gadarenes reject Christ because they saw in Him a swift Minister of that Divine vengeance which was due to them for their sins? We cannot blame them for this. But what if they had been better instructed in the nature of His Person and Mission? What if they had known that (1Ti_2:5)? What if they had heard those charming words (Joh_3:16-17; 1Jn_4:9)? Why, then the whole population would surely have gone out to meet Him, and to escort Him in triumph into their city. While they accepted Him as their Priest to make atonement for them, they would have sat at His feet as their Prophet, and sworn allegiance to Him as their King. What they did not know we do; therefore the reception which, had they known, they would have given Him let us give, and the homage which they would have rendered to Him let us render, saying, “Worthy is the Lamb,” etc.
Mar_5:17-19. The two prayers.—No contrast could be more striking than that presented by these verses. Under what circumstances was it, and with what motives, that these two prayers, most opposite in their purport, were offered to Christ? The answer to this question will shew us that these two contrary prayers are in fact offered up to Him now and daily,—one or other of them by every one of us; both, at different times, by many.
I. The prayer of the Gadarenes.—They might have known that One who gave signs so infallible of a Divine Mission must have a message for them from God. That that message was on the whole a gracious message they might have inferred from the sight of one out of whom demons were departed sitting at His feet clothed and in his right mind. But no: their fears and their displeasure prevailed, and they prayed Him only to depart out of their coasts. These Gadarenes were a type of thousands now. To us also Christ has come. We hear His Word. We see those miracles of His grace by which the thoughtless, selfish, sinful, are changed into a new image by the transforming power of faith in Christ. These things we see;—and, if our own heart condemns us as being still ourselves dead in sin, we may well tremble as we behold. But what further effect have these things had upon us? Have we drawn near to Him whose works are thus mighty, whose words are thus gracious? Have we sought to know more of Him than we could by the mere hearing of the ear? Being assured, by His own promise, that He hears prayers, have we prayed, are we daily praying, to. Him? Do we bring to Him our daily wants and sins and weaknesses, our daily duties, snares, and temptations, and ask in each for the everpresent help of His Holy Spirit? Or do we neglect all these things, and live much as we should if Christ had never died for us, and try to keep as far from Him as possible, lest we should be obliged to part with those things which we love better? Then, it is with us just as if we every day uttered the prayer of these Gadarenes, and besought Christ to depart from us! And this is a prayer which is soon answered. In that heart which refuses to believe Christ does no mighty works, because of its unbelief. He who desires to forget Christ may easily succeed in doing so. The Lord’s Spirit will not alway strive with man. So long as by our carelessness or our sins we are praying Christ to depart from us, and not to torment us before the time, so long we may too reasonably fear that that prayer will be heard—that He who has come out of His place with offers of mercy, He who is calling to us from heaven, and bidding us hear and live, will go and return unto His place, till we acknowledge our offence and seek His face.
II. The prayer of the man delivered from demons.—Knowing his own weakness, and the subtlety of his great enemy; knowing that till he heard the voice of Christ he had been in bondage, and that only by His strength is he free; fearing lest the departure of his Deliverer should be the signal for the return of the unclean spirit to his now deserted habitation,—he prays that he may remain with Christ, contented to be the companion of Him who has not where to lay His head, if he may but still hear the sound of that gracious voice, and be still within the reach of that compassionate arm. But as the prayer of unbelief and of carelessness, which beseeches Christ to depart, is but too surely fulfilled in His withdrawal, so this, though it be the prayer of faith and love, is yet no less surely refused. The time for uninterrupted converse with the Lord is hereafter, not now. A life of rapturous meditation, of ecstatic communion with a world unseen, is not that which will best glorify Christ, or shine most brightly before men. He who has been first healed by Christ must go back into the world to shew forth His praise. By pureness, by meekness, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, he must be Christ’s witness; men must take knowledge of him, by these signs, that he has been with Jesus. This is his work:—the other his refreshment, his recreation, his invigoration for future service. Seasons indeed are allowed him—and happy is he who cares for them—of visiting Christ, of communing with Him, of receiving from Him new supplies of mercy and grace. Such opportunities are prayer, the study of Scripture, and above all the Holy Communion; opportunities of being with Christ, of seeking from Him the restoration and revival of our souls—the casting out of those evil spirits of pride and sensuality and worldliness, which are ever regaining, in some new form, the possession of our hearts, and which no power but Christ’s can enable us to overcome. But every such approach to Him implies and looks forward to a subsequent return to the duties of daily life. We come to renew our strength, that again we may run and not be weary. We come to eat of that living bread, that so in the strength of that meat we may enter upon another stage of our pilgrimage towards the heavenly city.—Dean Vaughan.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mar_5:1-15. The greatness and the weakness of man.—
1. His greatness—seen in the fact that many demons can enter into him. Shew how men may be great in evil as well as in good—tyrants, warriors, conspirators, hypocrites, etc.
2. His weakness—seen in his yielding where he ought to have resisted, in his helplessness when he had once admitted the power of evil into his heart—seen also in his fear of the only power that could redeem him from its bondage.—J. Parker, D.D.
A revelation of the Saviour’s glory.—
1. As the Son of the living God.
2. As the King of the world of spirits.
3. As the Deliverer of the wretched.
4. As the Holy One, who does not suffer Himself to be entreated in vain to depart.—J. J. Van Oosterzee, D.D.
Mar_5:3; An inveterate habit of uncleanness frequently extinguishes all the principles of the Christian life; and an unchaste soul dwells in its body as in a loathsome sepulchre, where there is nothing but the remains of worms and corruption. This is but too often literally true. An unchaste person is a madman, whom everything provokes, whom nothing stops, and who will not bear the least restraint.—P. Quesnel.
Mar_5:4. Spiritual strength.—That poor man, possessed by that unclean spirit, was able to burst the fetters and chains which bound his limbs, and to break through all opposition of the arms of men; how much more powerful is he who is possessed by the Spirit of God, his will wholly given to obey His call, powerful to break away through any bonds with which the world would bind him, and to follow on the heavenly path, defying all opposition of an ungodly world!
Mar_5:5. The desolate places of the earth.—The gloomy waste, the sterile desert, are the contrast of Eden, and shewed themselves contemporaneously with man’s trangression; death and the grave are the result of sin—what fitter habitation than these could Satan and his myrmidons find? The demoniac, in the midst of his mental confusion, retains his old notions of the habits of demons, and yields readily to the impulse that sends him to solitude and graves, wherein he supposed they specially delight. How far he is a free agent, how far under the control of an alien force, we cannot accurately define. This is one of those mysterious matters of which we are greatly ignorant; but we have glimpses of an identification of man and devil which is inexpressibly awful. Meantime, whatever opinion we may form concerning the notion of evil spirits being especially attached to certain localities (and if we localise holiness we may equally localise wickedness), we may at any rate learn this lesson, that it is in souls dry of grace that Satan takes up his abode, in hearts not filled with love and faith that he finds entrance. Solitude does not bar him out. People have fled to the desert, living a life of want and pain far away from the busy haunts of men, that there, alone with God, as they thought, they might wrestle out their soul’s salvation; but the tempter has found them there. Wherever a soul is to be lost or won, as surely as this present life is our trial-time, as surely as this present world is our battle-field, so surely in this time and place are we exposed to the assaults of evil; and nothing can keep us safe but watchfulness and prayer.—W. J. Deane.
The madness of sin.—Having gone through some fearful scenes with madmen, I have a vivid idea of what this savage was. How strong, how rampant, how brutal! I have seen one leap from a third-storey window at a bound, and another crimson with his own blood from broken glass, and yet another defying five police-officers to touch a hair of his head. And what lessons have I then and there learned about the dreadfulness of being given up to Satan, and having such frenzied beings for everlasting associates—lessons, too, of thankfulness to God for sparing our reason, and warding off those accidents which might have robbed us of it. A fall on the ice, a fright, a blow from a stick, and you and I might now be even such outcasts.—Jas. Bolton.
Mar_5:6-7. A double nature.—That the man worshipped Jesus, and yet a moment after the evil spirit within him cried with a loud voice, as one who was not in the kingdom of Jesus—this is like our daily case. There is within us a double nature—a good spirit and an evil spirit; one minute one prevails, another minute the other governs. Even the best man is not free from sin. Good people have said they are surprised at the wickedness within them. On the other hand, even the worst man is hardly a devil yet. But most of us are between the two. We change, not perhaps quite so quickly as he whom the Gospel describes, and yet very quickly. In the morning we worship Jesus with our prayer and make good resolutions. But perhaps the same day, not long after, we lose our temper, and say spiteful things that have nothing in common with Jesus, the Son of God. Or perhaps he who said a prayer the same day is drunken, or does some dishonest action, or tells a lie. Thus we pass from Jesus to Satan.—Jas. Lonsdale.
Mar_5:7. The struggle to get rid of sin.—A man can never leave sin without violence; he can never root up an evil habit but nature must suffer deeply. She fights against grace; she causes the flesh to strive against the Spirit, and will against will. Whoever loves impurity dreads to be delivered from it, and omits nothing to continue himself under that miserable possession.—P. Quesnel.
Mar_5:9. Legion.—It may be that the fiends within him dictated his reply, or that he himself, conscious of their tyranny, cried out in agony, We are many—a regiment like those of conquering Rome, drilled and armed to trample and destroy, a legion. This answer distinctly contravened what Christ had just implied, that he was one, an individual, and precious in his Maker’s eyes. But there are men and women in every Christian land whom it might startle to look within, and see how far their individuality is oppressed and overlaid by a legion of impulses, appetites, and conventionalities, which leave them nothing personal, nothing essential and characteristic, nothing that deserves a name.—Dean Chadwick.
Troops of temptations.—Our enemies come upon us like a torrent. How much does it concern us to band our hearts together in a communion of saints! The number of our enemies adds to the praise of our victory. To overcome single temptations is commendable; but to subdue troops of temptations is glorious (Mat_12:45; Isa_59:19; Php_1:27).—Bishop Hall.
The Legion of sin.—Truly the name of sin is Legion. It is anger, malice, intemperance, murder, impurity, unfaithfulness, dishonesty, equivocation, dissimulation, falsehood, hypocrisy, ingratitude, disobedience, impatience, discontentment, envy, covetousness; it is profanity, formality, superstition, idolatry, blasphemy, and atheism. It is a repudiation of the authority, a defiance of the power, a slight to the wisdom, a contempt of the holiness, and unthankfulness for the goodness of God. It is the cause of all the error, conflict, cruelty, suffering, weeping, and woe that exist in this world. Like a foul demon, it has poisoned and polluted, blighted and cursed, everything it has touched. It has caused man, the noblest work of God, to become the destroyer of his own soul, the murderer of his brother, the enemy of his God.—A. Thompson.
Mar_5:12. The prayer of the demons.—
1. The language of conscious degradation. The demons knew there was an inexorable necessity carrying them downwards; the lake of unutterable woe would receive them at length; but they felt as if it would be a breaking of their fall, a something less than their ultimate misery, to take up their abode even in the vilest and most loathsome of the brute creation. Think not that you can indulge your vicious propensities without debasing your moral nature, or that you can tempt others to moral depravity without yourself becoming more depraved.
2. The language of conscious terror and alarm. That woful and degrading punishment they would acquiesce in, nay, acknowledge as a mark of condescension and favour, hoping thereby to effect at least a temporary delay of their ultimate sentence to the lake of endless perdition. They gain their wish; their prayer is answered; and with it increasing debasement, and the consummation of woe. Verily, it is a dangerous thing to tamper with our moral nature, and to take even a single step that leads down the terrible declivity.—J. Cochrane.
Mar_5:13. Jesus gave them leave.—Thus His power over the world of spirits was shown to be absolute; they could not operate even on the lower animals without His permission, much less could they dominate men, the sheep of His pasture. And at the same time this hidden world was demonstrated to be very real and very formidable, encompassing our path, restlessly seeking to mar, and to deface, and to destroy. Hereby too the sufferer was assured of his cure, and realised from what a tremendous evil he had been delivered; he was afforded a visible proof of that supernatural region; he was allowed a glimpse behind that veil which mortal eye cannot penetrate.—W. J. Deane.
Why such destruction?—Some think that the herd belonged to Jews, who were thus justly punished for dealing with animals forbidden by the law. But if the owners were Gentiles, another reason may be given. The heathen may have needed to be taught the reality of demoniacal possession, and that it was the providence of God alone that preserved them from evils worse than those which they saw exemplified in the demoniacs and the swine; or they might thus learn that salvation is of the Jews, and that it was the same God who gave to them their laws who shewed His authority over evil spirits by the demolition of the herd.—Ibid.
The drowning of the herd does not appear to have entered into the calculations of the unclean spirits. They desired houses to live in after their expulsion, and for them to plunge the swine into the lake would have defeated their purpose. The stampede was an unexpected effect of the commingling of the demoniac with the animal nature, and outwitted the demons. “The devil is an ass.” There is a lower depth than the animal nature; and even swine feel uncomfortable when the demon is in them, and in their panic rush anywhere to get rid of the incubus, and, before they know, find themselve struggling in the lake. “Which things are an allegory.”—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Mar_5:14-15. Miracles not necessarily convincing.—No miracle could be more decisive, or more directed to the hearts of men, than that which Christ worked on this occasion, and yet it produced no good effect whatever on the Gadarenes. The fact is, that much previous education and preparation are necessary in order to make a miracle effectual; in certain cases it may be wholesome or even necessary, but it is of the nature of a very violent medicine, which if administered indiscriminately may do much more harm than good. Might not one of the purposes of our Lord in working this miracle, which in some respects is of so exceptional a kind, have been to shew how impracticable it would have been for Him to establish His kingdom in the world by mere force of miracles?—Bishop H. Goodwin.
Mar_5:15. A reformed character.—When the formerly careless and mad wanderer after this world’s vain bubbles is under the salutary influence of Divine grace, where is he to be found, and what is he doing? He is to be found “sitting at the feet of Jesus,” receiving the instruction which the gospel of Jesus imparts, watching daily at wisdom’s gates, and waiting at the posts of wisdom’s doors. He is to be found in the court of the Lord’s house, waiting to hear what God the Lord will say unto him by the Divine Word. He becomes a companion of all those that fear God and keep His commandments. He now delights in the society of those as the excellent of the earth, whom he formerly hated and reviled as needlessly precise or superstitiously religious.—E. Edwards.
Lessons.—
1. How one spirit may disturb a whole household—make every means of happiness vain—render all the resources for enjoyment of no worth! All these resources only say, How happy we might be! There is a relief when our sorrow comes from sickness, accident, the visitation of God; but when it comes from moral insanity, the arrow is barbed indeed, and strikes and rankles deep. How much there is of this—from intemperance, dishonesty, passion, selfishness, sensuality, and meanness!
2. Jesus can transform this wild spirit and send him home a blessing. The moral maniac has been tamed! The ferocious tiger has departed, and the serenity of a true, manly soul has appeared—like the passing of the thunderous clouds that made night awful, and the coming forth of the morn, pouring her baptism of light on hill and tower and on the rolling river and the home.
3. Do not let us shake all this off with the passing hour, because we are not maniacs and cannot go home as such. But let this be our question: Where do we stand between this extreme, and what we should be? Here is the terrible maniac, and there is Jesus—where are we? With which have we the most features of character in common?—Henry Bacon.
Mar_5:17. Sins of communities.—
1. It is possible for communities as communities to sin, to transgress the law of righteousness, to incur guilt.
2. When a town as a town, or a parish as a parish, by its own vote and determination, does what is wrong, the bad consequences of the evil act are very likely to involve those who disapproved of the unrighteousness along with those who favoured it.
3. The duty which attaches to all right-minded people of trying to prevent this thing. By the words we speak, the opinions we express, the preferences we hint, the disapprovals we venture, the judgments we utter, the votes we cast, we do all of us and every one help to give character to the aggregate of public opinion. How are we to exercise this power of influence as we ought? By always seeking, as God gives us grace to do so, to take the worthiest and highest view of every question that comes before us.—W. R. Huntington, D.D.
Entreating Christ to depart.—It is an entreating of Christ to depart out of our coasts, whenever we allow ourselves in ever so little a matter to put profit before principle, to prefer gain to godliness. The permanence and stability of all we value most in social life, the maintenance of mutual confidence, the preservation of the purity of home—these and many other such precious possessions depend on being able to keep Christ within our borders.—Ibid
A Christless world.—That will be indeed a fatal day for society if ever the voices of those who would have Christ depart should so far prevail as to secure the accomplishment of the wish. Picture the Christless world rolling on its dismal course through space, no homes of prayer anywhere upon its surface, no gathered congregations lifting the voice of worship, no kneeling suppliants interceding for the sick and sorrowing, no bread of life, no cup of blessing, no tender ministries of loving care and sympathy, no children taught to say “Our Father,” no holy benediction for man and wife, no word of trustful hope for the dying, no utterance of faith in a joyful resurrection over the dead—nothing of all this, but, instead, only one long, hard, selfish struggle to see who shall be richest and who shall be strongest in a life of which the grave is the acknowledged end.—Ibid.
The difficulty of saving work.—Those who are acquainted with missionary exertions, either of ancient or modern times, to plant the gospel in heathen countries, know with what extreme difficulty any saving effect is wrought. In most instances, perhaps, the Word of life has been rejected, and Christ desired to depart out of their coasts, as an unwelcome guest, who was come to torment them before the time. But need we go far from home to see this? When any attempt is made to revive practical religion in our days, and to call the attention of nominal Christians to those grand truths which they profess in words, how is the attempt received? When Christ is faithfully preached, and the doctrines of His religion explained and pressed upon men’s consciences, how do they behave? When any among them are persuaded to receive Christ into their hearts by faith, to come out from the world which lieth in wickedness, and to devote themselves to His service, how are they treated by their unbelieving friends? Is there not still something in the presence of Christ, and the close application of His doctrines to the mind and conscience, that is tormenting? Is not a life formed upon the principles of the gospel offensive to those who will not receive nor act upon those principles?—W. Richardson.
Mar_5:18-19. Lessons.—
1. This shews how dear the presence of Christ is to those who have seen and felt His grace.
2. Let us submit readily to our Lord’s will in all His denials of our requests.
3. Let us reflect on the experience we have had of the power and compassion of Christ.
4. What noble subjects religion furnishes for domestic converse!
5. How graciously Christ adapts our sphere of labour to the state of the body and mind!
6. Be content to labour in the humblest and most private sphere.—H. Belfrage, D.D.
Mar_5:19. Home.—A man may be said to have two lives in one—his public and his home life. Those who work with him through the week can tell you his outward character, his habits, his appearance; but there may be a great deal, whether of good or bad, that they do not know because they do not know his home. If they did, they might respect him more than they do already, or despise him more than they do already, but probably their opinion of him would not remain the same.
1. Home is the refuge of affections. Among strangers we might be misunderstood or condemned; at home we are believed in; they who know us best, know that, with all our faults, there is something to care about.
2. Home is a place of memories. In your own household pleasures need never be far to seek while you recall together things which happened years ago.
3. The best homes are also centres of personal religion. “Go home to thy friends, and tell them” all that God teaches you, all that God has given you to know of His dealings: tell those at home in the best of all speech, that of your daily example.—W. R. Hutton.
The Lord’s doings.—
1. Christ is ready to do all for His people that He consistently can do.
2. Christians are bound to tell all that Christ has done for them.
3. Why does Christ not do more for many of His disciples? Chiefly because they do not make an honest surrender of themselves and all they possess to Him.
4. Christians should seek to know more, experimentally, that they may have more to tell.
5. If Christians had more to tell of the Saviour’s wonderful works in them, and were more faithful in telling it, our country would soon be brought to Christ.—J. B. Shaw, D.D.
How the gospel is to be propagated.—
1. It is to be declared at home.
2. It is to be founded on personal experiences.
3. It is to acknowledge the power and goodness of God alone.—J. Parker, D.D.
What has Christ done for us?—What is our present state as compared with our former condition? What is our moral tone? What is our attitude in relation to the future? If we can answer these questions satisfactorily, we have a sufficient reply to all controversial difficulties and to all speculative scepticism.—Ibid.
Be fruitful.—The first act God requires of a convert is, “Be fruitful.” The good man’s goodness lies not hidden in himself alone; he is still strengthening his weaker brother. How soon would the world and Christianity fail, if there were not propagation both of it and man! Good works and good instructions are the generative acts of the soul, out of which spring new prosperity to the Church and gospel (Luk_22:32; Joh_1:40-41; Joh_1:45; Joh_15:16; Rom_1:11; Jas_5:19-20).—O. Feltham.
Mar_5:20. A thankful heart can not easily confine itself within the narrow bounds of gratitude prescribed to it. There are some graces which are proper to be published; and there are others which ought to be concealed. It is just to publish those which, being preceded by heinous sins, cannot be ascribed to anything but the pure mercy of God, and which are visibly counterbalanced by our demerits. It is the safer way to conceal such as may be looked on as the reward of great fidelity in making a good use of those which a man has received before. The glory of God and the advantage of our neighbour are the rules to be observed on this occasion. He who does not publish them of his own accord, when they are extraordinary in their kind, and the example may be dangerous to the weak, shelters his neighbour’s weakness under the veil of silence, and his own under that of obedience.—P. Quesnel.
Marvelling.—The demoniac’s narrative would shew these people that it was not Jesus whom they had to fear, but evil spiritual powers to whose invasions their lives and habits exposed them, and would thus prepare them to receive with favour the preaching of the apostles after Christ’s ascension and the Pentecostal effusion of the Holy Ghost. The immediate effect of the missionary’s story is related alone by Mark: “and all men did marvel.” Such marvelling is the beginning of faith; it leads to consideration of the claims of the Wonder-worker, and acknowledgment of His Divine power.—W. J. Deane.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 5
Mar_5:2-5. A man in ruins.—Can anything be more sad than the wreck of a man? We mourn over the destruction of many noble things that have existed in the world. Men, when they hear of the old Phidian Jupiter—that sat forty feet high, carved of ivory and gold, and that was so magnificent, so transcendent, that all the ancient world counted him unhappy that died without having seen this most memorable statue that ever existed in the world—often mourn to think that its exceeding value led to its destruction, and that it perished. It was a great loss to art that such a thing should perish. Can any man look upon the Acropolis—shattered with balls, crumbled by the various influences of the elements, and utterly destroyed—and not mourn to think that such a stately temple, a temple so unparalleled in its exquisite symmetry and beauty, should be desolate and scattered? Can there be anything more melancholy than the destruction, not only of such temples as the Acropolis and the Parthenon, but of a whole city of temples and statues? More melancholy than the destruction of a statue, or a temple, or a city, or a nation, in its physical aspects, is the destruction of a man, the wreck of the understanding, the ruin of the moral feelings, the scattering all abroad of those elements of power that, united together, make man fitly the noblest creature that walks on the earth. Thousands and thousands of men make foreign pilgrimages to visit and mourn over fallen and destroyed cities of former grandeur and beauty; and yet, all round about every one of us, in every street, and in almost every neighbourhood, there are ruins more stupendous, more pitiful, and more heart-touching than that of any city. And how strange would be the wonder if, as men wandered in the Orient, there should come some one that should call from the mounds all the scattered ruins of Babylon, or build again Tadmor of the desert! How strange it would be to see a city, that at night was a waste heap, so restored that in the morning the light of the sun should flash from pinnacle, and tower, and wall, and roof! How marvellous would be that creative miracle! But more marvellous, ten thousand times, is that Divine touch by which a man, broken down and shattered, is raised up in his right mind, and made to sit, clothed, at the feet of Jesus.—H. W. Beecher.
Mar_5:3. The tombs.—In the East the receptacles of the dead are always situated at some distance from the abodes of the living; and if belonging to kings or men of rank, are spacious vaults and magnificent structures, containing, besides the crypt that holds the ashes of their solitary tenants, several chambers or recesses which are open and accessible at the sides. In these the benighted traveller often finds a welcome asylum; in these the dervishes and santons, wandering mendicants that infest the towns of Persia and other Eastern countries, generally establish themselves, and they are often, too, made the haunts of robbers and lawless people, who hide themselves there to avoid the consequences of their crimes. Nor are they occupied only by such casual and dangerous tenants. When passing through a desolate village near the Lake of Tiberias, Giovanni Finati saw the few inhabitants living in the tombs as their usual place of residence; and at Thebes the same traveller, when he was introduced to Mr. Beechy, the British Consul, found that gentleman had established himself, while prosecuting his researches among the ruins of that celebrated place, in the vestibule of one of the tombs of the ancient kings. Captain Light, who travelled over the scene of our Lord’s interview with the demoniac, describes the tombs as still existing in the form of caverns cut in the live rock, like those at Petra—as wild and sequestered solitudes, divided into a number of bare and open niches, well suited to be places of refuge to those unhappy lunatics for whom the benevolence of antiquity had not provided a better asylum.
Mar_5:11-15. The demoniac’s restoration.—A victim of intemperance was dashing himself hither and thither at risk of life, in vain attempts to elude the monstrous phantom serpent he saw assailing him. Nurses and physicians were baffled. Opiates had no effect. The man must sleep, or he must die. A new physician was summoned. He entered the room with a huge bare knife, attacked the phantom serpent, fought it, drove it under the bed, while the cowering wretch watched every motion in an agony of alternating hopes and fears; stabbed it again and again, slew it, dragged it across the floor, threw it from the door, locked the door again; and the sufferer, with a great sigh of relief, sank into a slumber which saved his reason and his life. May not such an experience throw light upon the fact that Jesus allowed the demons to enter into the swine and drive them down a steep place into the sea, where they were choked? Certainly not until he had seen that did the demoniac sit at Jesus’ feet, “clothed, and in his right mind.”
Mar_5:13. The destructive character of sin.—Satan’s work is a work of destruction. Nearly seven hundred years ago Jenghis Khan swept over Central Asia, and it is said that, for centuries after, his course could be traced by the pyramids of human bones—the bones of slaughtered captives—which his armies left behind them. If the bones of Satan’s slain captives could be piled up in our sight, what a pyramid that would be! Self-mutilation has always been common among the worshippers of false gods; to this day the fakirs of India cut and gnash themselves with knives. The devil sets his servants at the same unprofitable task. Aloed-Din, the chief of the Assassins, succeeded in persuading his men that whoever would fall in his service was sure of paradise; and so, at a nod of their chief, the poor dupes would stab themselves to the heart, or fling themselves over precipices. Satan’s one aim is to blind his captives, and lead them to self-destruction.
Mar_5:15-16. Transforming influence of Christianity.—A young man, an apprentice in an extensive tin factory in Massachusetts, who had formerly been very profligate, having applied for admission into a Church, the minister called on his master to inquire whether any change had been wrought in his conduct, and whether he had any objection to his reception. When the minister had made the customary inquiries, his master, with evident emotion, though he was not a professor of religion, replied in substance as follows: Pointing to an iron chain hanging up in the room, “Do you see that chain?” said he. “That chain was forged for W—. I was obliged to chain him to the bench by the week together, to keep him at work. He was the worst boy I had in the whole establishment. No punishment seemed to have any salutary influence upon him. I could not trust him out of my sight. But now, sir, he is completely changed—he has really become like a lamb. He is one of my best apprentices. I would trust him with untold gold. I have no objection to his being received into communion. I wish all my boys were prepared to go with him”.—In a manuscript by an old Scotch minister, in the early part of the eighteenth century, there is a remarkable account of the conversion of Lord Jeddart, who had been famous for his recklessness in sin, and of the astonishment it caused among Christian people. A little after his conversion, and before the thing was known, he came to the Lord’s table. He sat next a lady who had her hands over her face, and did not see him till he delivered the cup out of his hand. When she saw that it was Lord Jeddart, who had been so renowned for sin, she fell a-trembling terribly for very amazement that such a man should be there. He noticed it, and said, “Madam, be not troubled: the grace of God is free!” This calmed the lady; but when we consider what sort of man Lord Jeddart had been, we can account for her surprise.—Guthrie, of Fenwick, a Scotch minister, once visited a dying woman. He found her anxious about her state, but very ignorant. His explanation of the gospel was joyfully received by her, and soon after she died. On his return home, Guthrie said, “I have seen a strange thing to-day—a woman whom I found in a state of nature I saw in a state of grace, and left in a state of glory.”—“When I get to heaven,” said John Newton, “I shall see three wonders there: the first wonder will be to see many people there whom I did not expect to see; the second wonder will be to miss many people whom I did expect to see; and the third and greatest wonder of all will be to find myself there.”
Mar_5:17. Rejection of Christ.—Even so do men now deal with their Saviour. He draws nigh to us in His Word and Sacraments. He is close to us in blessings and in the discipline of life; but we will not have Him to teach us. We fear it may interfere with our plans and ways of life if we should become really religious! In many ways we “beseech Him to depart”—some by wilful sins, which cannot be enjoyed in the presence of Christ. The busy, active man, who lives for this world only, has no time “to waste” on religion, so he bids the Redeemer “depart.” The thoughtless, careless lover of pleasure, looking upon spiritual claims as an interruption to his amusements, feels no need for a Saviour and hears with unconcern His retreating footsteps. Alas! how many will, when too late, regret their neglect of, or contempt for, religion! A few years ago, the Prime Minister of England stepped across Downing Street with a friend, who wanted some information from one of the Government officials. They entered the particular office, and on inquiring for the Head of the Department were curtly told to “wait” by an insolent young clerk, who did not even look up from his newspaper, and presently added an order to “wait outside.” When the principal official returned, he was thunderstruck to find the Head of the Government sitting with his friend on the steps of the stone staircase. Equally surprised was the clerk when, to his dismay, he learned by his dismissal the result of his careless insolence. In earthly things men bitterly regret “chances” lost or thrown away, and yet we treat with indifference our opportunities in the spiritual life!—Dr. Hardman.
Folly of communities.—Bishop Butler had a very poor opinion of the wisdom of communities. His chaplain, Dean Tucker, tells that he one day asked him “why whole communities of public bodies might not be seized with fits of insanity, as well as individuals,” and on the chaplain declaring that he had not considered the subject, the bishop added: “Nothing but this principle, that they are liable to insanity equally at least with private persons, can account for the major part of those transactions of which we read in history.”
Mar_5:19. “Tell what the Lord hath done for thee.”—A young lady sat in her room one day reading her Bible, and came to this verse. The words rang in her ears, and refused to leave her, until she resolved she would speak to the first person she met on her way down town. Closing her book, she donned her wraps, and stepped into the street just as a young man, who was one of her particular friends, was passing. As they walked along together she tried hard to find courage to speak to him; but each time Satan would say, Wait. When they came to the place of separation, they lingered a moment, and she said, “George, I want to tell you about my Friend, one that has been so kind and good to me, and one whom you would enjoy to know, and whose influence you so much need.” Her companion listened with unusual earnestness. “George, I want to see you under the care and influence of my Saviour. Won’t you, now, just give up all, and take hold on Him?” The young man was deeply impressed, and promised to seriously meditate on such a step, at the same time informing his friend that he would leave town next day to be gone some time in the interest of his employer. The young lady passed on down the street to attend some business, thinking little more about the young man, until, a few days after, when a small note was handed her, bearing these words: “Mamie, I accepted your Great Friend as my Friend too: am saved. Oh, how glad that you told me of Him! Your friend, George.” The words were written as he lay dying in a railroad wreck.
Mar_5:20. Zeal in spreading the gospel.—A remarkable case occurred in the Batticaloa District. It was that of a heathen who was employed in one of the mission schools, not to teach Christianity, but to assist the Christian teacher in teaching secular subjects. Being thus brought under the influence of the gospel, his mind gradually opened to receive the truth; and as soon as he had made a profession of Christ, he had a desire to make known to others the glad news of salvation. Week after week, and month after month, he walked six or eight miles to a distant village, without pay, to preach Christ to the people. The love of Christ constrained him to the work, and the result was that nearly all the people of that village received the truth, and a short time after the missionary there baptised on one occasion thirty-two persons.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain Mat 8:28-34; Mat 9:1; Mar 5:1-21; and Mar 5:26-40.…
THE DEMONIZED GADERENE
Mat 8:28-34; Mat 9:1; Mar 5:1-21; and Mar 5:26-40. We visited this country of the Gadarenes, which comes down to the northeast coast of this sea; Gergesa, their capital, situated on a beautiful, rich plain, enjoying a handsome view of this beautiful water, as well as the majestic mountains and fertile valleys of the surrounding countries. Matthew says they came to Gergesa, Mark and Luke say they came to the country of Gadara. This is in perfect harmony, as Gergesa was the city and Gadara the country. You must remember that when our Savior bade the temple adieu, the day before He was arrested, He said, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” Within forty years from the utterance the Roman armies signally verified it. Hence the desolation has been on that country ever since. However, Gadara was a Gentile country; but it was the subject of a terrible Divine retribution, as we will see in this narrative, for rejecting the ministry of Jesus. “And they came to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes, and a man with an unclean spirit, from the tombs, met Him immediately having come out of the ship, who had his habitation among the tombs; and no one was able to bind him with chains, because frequently he had been bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been slipped off by him and the fetters torn to pieces, and no one was able to subdue him.” Matthew says there were two demoniacs, exceedingly fierce, so no one could pass that way. Mark and Luke speak of but one. Luke says that he wore no clothing. It is a notable fact that raging maniacs have an aversion to wearing clothing, and if possible will tear it off. Mark: “And he was all the time, night and day, among the tombs and in the mountains; was crying, and cutting himself with stones. Seeing Jesus a great way off, he ran and fell down before Him, and crying, with a great voice, said, What is there to me and to Thee, O Jesus, the Son of the Most High God? I adjure Thee, in the name of God, that you torment me not; for He said to him, Unclean spirit, come out from the man.” Luke says: “For a long time he had possessed him, and he was kept bound with fetters and chains; and smashing his fetters, he was driven by the demon into the wilderness. And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? and he said, Legion, because many demons had entered into him. And he continued to exhort Him that He may not command them to depart into the abyss;” i.e., the bottomless pit.
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God never created the devil, a sinner, nor a snake. The snake originated from the transformation of the Nahash, an intelligent biped, one of the intermediate links between man and the lower animals, and unfortunately used by Satan in the abduction of humanity. Satan is a fallen archangel:
“How thou art fallen, O Lucifer, the morning star!” (Isa 14:12.)
The term “devil” is the ordinary cognomen of Satan, demon being the regular epithet applied to those innumerable evil spirits, swarming up out of the bottomless pit and thronging the atmosphere, their highest aspiration being a habitation in some human spirit, as in the case of this Gadarene, into whom a whole legion — i.e., ten thousand — had crowded together. Nothing is so terrible to these demons as the gloomy dungeons of the bottomless pit. Consequently they importuned Jesus not to send them thither. Originally the intelligences inhabiting the innumerable worlds, constituting the celestial empire, were presumptively all on probation. In the fatal revolt of Lucifer, an immense host, perhaps one-third (Revelation 12), followed the apostate archangel. As this apostasy, in all probability, infected many celestial worlds, we find innumerable hosts of fallen demons roaming round this world, hunting a habitation in some human heart. (Ephesians 6) We have no right to conclude that this Gadarene is the only legionaire in all the earth. It is pertinent to remember how all the demons, with whom Jesus comes in contact, recognize Him. We have no record at what epoch in bygone eternity the angels were created; evidently long before Divinity spoke this world into existence. As Jesus is co-eternal with God Himself, identical with the uncreated Jehovah, the recognition of these demons is doubtless a vivid reminiscence of the bright celestial ages which glided away before the dark period of rebellion and ruin supervened. It is here specified that the legionaire tore his clothing from his person, smashing all the fetters and escaping from all the chains with which they could bind him. The muscular power of these Oriental red men is vastly superior to that of Europeans and Americans. In all probability, he was a natural giant, as were most of the aborigines in that country in the days of Joshua; for you must remember he was not a Hebrew, but a Gentile. It is generally believed that physical strength is located in the muscles. This is a mistake. The muscles are the mere instruments used by the nerves, which are the custodians of physical power. A crowbar is a most potent instrument in the hands of a stalwart man; but left alone, utterly impotent.
I thought the muscles were the custodians of physical strength till, in 1884, a stroke of partial paralysis demonstrated the utter impotency of the muscles without nervous stimuli. From a human standpoint, the exegesis of Samson’s paradoxical strength was the induement of the Holy Ghost, who operated through his nerves, thus imparting miraculous physical dynamics. Now remember, this Gadarene had ten thousand demons, ready in a moment to electrify his nerves, thus imparting an incredible muscular power. I have seen epileptics whom it took a half-dozen strong men to manage. You have all witnessed the extraordinary feats of strength and activity performed by maniacs, lunatics, and epileptics. This man was doubtless a combination of them all, so many demons, ready at any moment to turn loose the very galvanic batteries of the pandemonium on their poor victim, thus making them instrumental in the most paradoxical feats of agility and power. Why did he dwell among the tombs? Satan is king of death and hell. He sways his leaden scepter over every graveyard, holding fast every human body in the dark sepulcher, as their souls in the regions of woe. Hence these demons found congeniality among the tombs.
Mar 5:11. “And there was at the mountain a great herd of swine, feeding. And all the demons entreated him saying, Send us into the swine, that we may go into them. And Jesus immediately permitted them. And the unclean spirits, having come out, went into the swine, and the herd rushed down a steep place into the sea, and there were about two thousand, and they perished in the sea.” These heathen Gentiles set great store on the hog, a notoriously unclean animal, which God’s people were forbidden to raise, heavy interdictions being laid on the eating of the same. When I visited that country last November, our dragoman showed us the mountain traditionally recognized as the pasture of the swine, and the cliff down which the whole herd stampeded into the sea; thus transmitting to us a most monitory lesson against demoniacal possession, which is so common in all ages, the present day being no exception to the rule. Here we see these hogs unhesitatingly choosing suicide rather than demoniacal possession. This verdict of the swine should put millions to the blush this day, who go over the earth, full of demons, and claiming a place among the bon tons of society. “And those herding them fled, and proclaimed in the city and in the country; and they came out to see what is that which has been done. And they come to Jesus, and see the demonized man sitting down, clothed, and in his right mind, him who was called Legion; and they were afraid. And those seeing, explained to them how it occurred to the demonized man, and concerning the swine. And they began to entreat Him to depart from their coasts.” Luk 8:36 : “And those seeing, explained to them how the demonized man was saved; and the whole multitude of the surrounding country of the Gadarenes entreated Him to depart from them, because they were possessed with great fear.” Here we have the united testimony of Matthew, Mark, and Luke to the unanimous and importunate verdict of all the Gadarenes, requesting Jesus to leave their country. That this awful and hopeless demoniac had been wonderfully saved, all admitted. But there was another phase to the matter — they had lost their swine. Now a pertinent question looks them all in the face. Will they have Jesus or bacon? If they keep Jesus, they can have all of the sick healed, all the devils cast out, all the people saved, soul and body, and turn their country into a little heaven, so they can live on angels’ food instead of “hog and hominy.” The popular verdict comes quickly, and without a dissenting voice: they all decide to let Jesus go, and save their bacon to eat and sell for the money.
DOOM OF GADARA
“And embarking into the ship, He returned;” i.e., went back to Capernaum, the center of His evangelistic work in the North, thus throwing a dark shadow over all of that country of the Gadarenes, which has wrapped it in gloom and withered it with desolation these eighteen hundred years. When I visited that country, with its beautiful, fertile plains, bordering on the sea; majestic, rich mountains, with innumerable valleys and coves — all, at the time of our Savior’s visit, flourishing as the gardens of the Lord, cultivated by a thriving and enterprising people, whose temporal needs a gracious Providence had most abundantly supplied. So they needed nothing but the Savior, whom, in loving, Fatherly affection, He so kindly sent them. O what a grand introductory He made among them in saving the worst man they had! How all hell rallied to hold their grip tight on Gadara! Jesus comes to all people, even uninvited, thus pitying their blindness and ignorance, and giving all a chance for salvation. But when He turns the light on them, if, instead of rejoicing in it, they prefer darkness, and, like these besotted Gadarenes, even have the impudence to ask Him to leave, He always goes, leaving them to their choice, with the devil and hell, world without end. Jesus saves none against their will; neither does He stay where He is not wanted. When I stood upon the old walls of Gergesa, the capital of Gadara, to which Jesus went, and looked around upon the ruins of the city, without an inhabitant except the wandering Arabs, then on the spot, grazing their herds and flocks, and saw their country, which has lain desolate eighteen hundred years, I saw in panorama, as I look out over the sea, Jesus embarking on the ship, which sails away, appearing smaller and smaller, till she passes out of sight, thus leaving poor Gadara doomed and ruined. How signally has this been verified in the dismal fate of that country! The Gadarenes have literally faded from the face of the earth, not one to be found; their capital desolate, their cities and villages depopulated and destroyed; their country in the hands of the nomadic Bedonins, the wild sons of Ishmael, in reference to whom God said, “His hand shall be against every man’s hand, and every man’s hand against him.” They are born robbers. If you would visit the land of Gadara this day, you would need an armed escort to save you from robbery and murder. What a warning to the people who request Jesus to depart from them!
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain Mar 5:1-17
Mar 5:1-17
This story may be viewed in four aspects.
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I. The human. (a) The human aspect as seen in shadow: (1) Man impure—unclean spirit; (2) Man dis-socialised—his dwelling was among the tombs; (3) Man unrestrained—no man could tame him; (4) Man self-tormented. (b) As seen in light: (1) Man tranquillized—sitting; (2) Man civilised—clothed; (3) Man intellectualised—in his right mind.
II. The Divine. (1) Christ identified by His holiness; (2) Christ feared for His power; (3) Christ recognised in the realm of spirit.
III. The Diabolic. (1) As showing great resources, "we are many"; (2) as displaying subordination—they besought Christ; (3) as revealing destructiveness—whatever they touch, man or beast, they destroy.
IV. (1) Society trembling under manifestations of spiritual power—"they were afraid." (2) Society caring more for beasts than for men—they prayed Him to depart out of their coasts.
Parker, City Temple, 1871, p. 83.
References: Mar 5:1-20.—W. Hanna, Our Lord’s Life on Earth, p. 190. Mar 5:11-20.—H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man, p. 104.
Mar 5:15, Mar 5:17
I. We learn that in our Saviour’s day there was devil power at work in the world, and that it assumed various manifestations and forms more or less repulsive, agonising and destructive. This was Satan’s day, his hour, and the power of darkness. And has this devil power ceased in our own day? It would be a fond delusion to suppose so. He may be gagged and pushed into the slums and back streets of a civilised community. He may assume among us the garb of an angel of light; but across the sea he has no motive for playing at such disguises. There he is as ever the open and avowed enemy of God and man.
II. We have seen in this narrative as in others, that the devils were obedient to the potent word of command which fell from the lips of Christ: "Come out of him, thou unclean spirit," and shortly afterwards the once-possessed might have been seen "sitting, clothed, in his right mind." This power and authority was relegated to His apostles by the Master also, not for a temporary purpose, or to be confined to one age or one nation, for we read that after the cross had been endured and the grave emptied, the Master said again, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. In My name shall they cast out devils." We dare not explain this away and say this was a miraculous power which ceased with a miraculous age. The Gospel and the Church, which is a keeper and witness of the truth, have had this power ever since, and they have exercised it in every age, and before our eyes, and we are witnesses that it is no sham, but a blessed reality. Every one called from darkness to light, and from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God is a witness. Christendom is a living witness, built up of lively stones, to the potency of Christ, His Gospel and His Church, over all Satanic arts and influences.
A. Cooper, Penny Pulpit (New series), No. 932.
References: Mar 5:15.—Outline Sermons to Children, p. 139. Mar 5:18.—G. Calthrop, Words Spoken to my Friends, p. 239.
Mar 5:18-21
I. The recollection of our Christless state should beget a spirit of distrust in ourselves. The healed man was naturally anxious to remain at the side of his healer.
II. We see here the possibility of being under the protection of Christ even though far from His physical presence. The healed man was as surely under the care of Christ when miles away as when within reach of His hand. Christ always pointed towards a spiritual reign, and both incidentally and directly discouraged trust in merely fleshly presence and power.
Parker, City Temple, 1871, p. 84.
References: Mar 5:18, Mar 5:19.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 163. Mar 5:19.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii., No. 109; H. W. Beecher, Plymouth Pulpit Sermons, 4th series, p. 27.
Mar 5:20-21
Thronging Christ and touching Christ.
Note:—
I. The mighty difference, it may be a difference for us as of life and death, between thronging Jesus and touching Him. The multitude thronged Him; only this faithful woman touched Him. There was nothing to the outward eye which should distinguish between her action and theirs. Peter and the other disciples could see nothing to distinguish this woman from any other member of that eager, inquisitive, unceremonious multitude which crowded around Him, as was their wont; so that Peter, who was always ready, and sometimes too ready, with his word, is half inclined to take his Lord up and rebuke Him for asking this question, "Who touched me?" A question which had so little reason in it, seeing that the whole multitude were thronging and pressing upon Him at every moment and on every side. But Christ re-affirms and repeats His assertion: "Somebody hath touched Me." He knew the difference, He distinguished at once, as by a Divine instinct, that believing one from the unbelieving many. There was that in her which put her in connection with the grace, the strength, the healing power which were in Him. Do you ask me what this was? It was faith. It was her faith. She came expecting a blessing, believing in blessing, and so finding the blessing which she expected and believed. But that careless multitude who thronged the Lord, only eager to gratify their curiosity, and to see what new wonder He would next do, as they desired nothing, expected nothing, from Him, so they obtained nothing. Empty they came, and empty they went away.
II. Is there not here the explanation of much, of only too much, in the spiritual lives of men. We are of the many that throng Jesus, not of the faithful few who touch Him. We bear a Christian name; we go through a certain round of Christian duties; we are thus brought outwardly in contact with the Lord; but we come waiting for no blessing, and so obtaining no blessing. Faith is wanting, faith, the divine hunger of the soul, the emptiness of the soul longing to be filled, and believing that it will be filled, out of God’s fulness, and because this is so, therefore there goes no virtue out from Him to us; it is never given to us so to touch Him as that immediately we know in ourselves that we are whole of our plague.
R. C. Trench, Sermons in Westminster Abbey, p. 318.
Mar 5:21-43
The Daughter of Jairus.
This story shows us:
I. The Heart of Jesus. Many are anxious to find out what the face of Jesus was like, but our concern should be to know how His heart feels towards us. If you lay your hand upon any page in the gospels, you will feel the throbbings of a heart full of wonderful pity for all sinners and sufferers. All His sayings and doings, His death and resurrection, reveal a loving kindness to which there are no bounds. As the great ocean opens its bosom to receive all the rivers, so Christ’s bosom is open for all the sorrows of men. The heart of Jesus to you is the very same as it was in the house of Jairus. He is the same yesterday, today, and for ever.
II. The Hand of Jesus. It touches the sick and dead; it is full of power. With a mere wish, with a word at a distance, He could have healed this girl; but it was usually His way to touch those He healed. He did more than touch this girl; He firmly grasped her with His warm human hand, and she arose. He became a man, our kinsman and elder brother, that He might be near enough to touch us fully, and to touch us always.
III. The Healing of Jesus. This girl must have had strange feelings when her soul returned to the body it had recently forsaken. We are not told that she was startled or frightened. Perhaps she could say about her new life what Dr. Malan of Geneva said about his: "I was awakened as a mother awakens her child with a kiss," with all the power of God and with gentleness more than a mother’s, Christ by touch and voice awoke the girl, and welcomed her back to life. Jesus has more than a touch, a tear and a kind word to give to our misery. His name declares the work to which He gave himself on earth, and gives Himself still in heaven. Jesus means healer. Nor is He like the healers in our hospitals, who must sometimes leave the healed to starve and to find hunger as cruel as disease. Christ did not heal and then leave this girl: He helped her up, and got her food. He preserves and strengthens for ever the life He gives to the soul. About the after history of this girl we are told nothing. But we are sure that she loved her healer while she had being. We readily believe that she was made Christ’s by every tie of gratitude. And so our religion is a religion of gratitude for the greatest and freest favours. It is, therefore, a religion of love and joy.
J. Wells, Bible Children, p. 199.
Reference: Mar 5:21-43.—H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man, p. 109.
Mar 5:22-24
The case of the ruler may be treated as showing the instructive-ness of domestic affliction.
I. It shows the helplessness even of the greatest men—the applicant was a ruler, yet his rulership was of no avail in this case.
II. It shows the helplessness even of the kindest men—the applicant was a father, yet all his yearning affection was unable to suggest a remedy for his afflicted child.
III. It shows the need of Christ in every life.
Parker, City Temple, 1871, p. 93.
References: Mar 5:22-43.—W. Hanna, Our Lord’s Life on Earth, p. 169. Mar 5:24.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 161. Mar 5:24-34.—Ibid., Plymouth Pulpit Sermons, 10th series, p. 425.
Mar 5:25-27
(with Isa 42:3)
The Survival of the Fittest and a Higher Law.
I. We see in this text, from Mark, the compassion of Christ for those who are, humanly speaking, incurable, as this woman was according to the medical knowledge of her age. Jesus did not say to her, "Go away; you are too weak and broken to hold your own in the world; best for you to be down and wait for the end, while others take your place who can do your work." That would have been a sorrowful word, not to her only, but to us also; for it would have set a limit, not to Christ’s power merely, but to His very compassion; and therein also to ours. That, however, is not the law which human hearts acknowledge. Our power may easily have limits, but our pity must have none, and as we can help not a little even when we cannot heal, it is bound upon our conscience never to be inhuman. The bruised reed He would not break. But this, while it is the supreme law of man’s nature, is by no means the law of Nature elsewhere. On the contrary, that law has been not unfairly expressed in the now familiar formula, "the survival of the fittest"—that is to say, Nature allows those only to live who are able to hold their own, and the rest she ruthlessly dooms to destruction.
II. It seems clear that the natural law of a supreme struggle for existence and survival of the fittest could never, by any process of development, grow into the moral law of self-sacrifice and supreme compassion for the weak and suffering. The whole higher life of man—whether seen in the noble magnanimity of the Gentile hero, or in the chivalry and meek suffering of the Christian,—all those virtues of compassion, gentleness and mercy, which we justly call humanity, because he who has them not is unworthy of the name of man, are all alien and opposite to the mere law of nature, and could not possibly grow out of it. However it be with our bodies, our souls are not an evolution of the brute soul—not a mere variety better fitted for the struggle.
III. I claim for man an exceptional position in God’s universe, that he may be led to do the fitting works of an exceptional virtue. It is a great thing to live under a higher law than that of the brute creatures; but our guilt is only the greater if we live on like the brute. To allow the better and follow the worse is always base; but it is doubly bad when we claim superiority in virtue of the good we allow, and yet do not practise it.
W. C. Smith, Christian World Pulpit, vol. x., p. 177.
References: Mar 5:25.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 542. Mar 5:25, Mar 5:26.—Ibid., vol. i., p. 256. Mar 5:25-27.—Three Hundred Outlines on the New Testament, p. 34.
Mar 5:25-28
The Power of Feeble Faith.
I. We have here, first, the great lesson that very imperfect faith may be genuine faith.
II. Christ answers the imperfect faith.
III. Christ corrects and confirms an imperfect faith by the very act of answering it.
A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester, 2nd series, p. 294.
References: Mar 5:25-27.—J. M. Neale, Sermons in a Religious House, 2nd series, vol. i., p. 104. Mar 5:25-28.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv., No. 827.
Mar 5:25-34
I. Human extremity—the woman had suffered many years, and had spent all.
II. Human earnestness—though much people thronged the Saviour, and she was weak, yet she found her way to the Healer.
III. Divine sensitiveness. Jesus Christ knew the difference between mere pressure and the touch of loving faith.
IV. Public confession. Thankfulness should always be courageous and explicit.
Parker, City Temple, 1871, p. 93.
References: Mar 5:25-34.—H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man, p. 114. Mar 5:26.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 281.
Mar 5:28
The spiritual value of the near and visible.
The afflicted woman did not invoke the whole power of the Godhead; she said that a mere touch was enough. She believed that the Divine element penetrated and vitalised the outward and visible covering, so much so that to touch the clothes was to touch God Himself. The idea is that we need far less proof of God’s existence and beneficence than we often demand. Apply this thought.
I. To spiritual existences. If I touch but a grain of sand, I find the Mighty One.
II. To the scheme of spiritual providence. Limit the new to one life—touch but the hem of the garment.
III. To the processes of spiritual education.
IV. To the uses of spiritual ordinances.
Parker, City Temple, vol. i., p. 55.,
References Mar 5:28.—New Outlines on the New Testament, p. 35; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii., No. 1382. Mar 5:29-34.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 281. Mar 5:30.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii., p. 249; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. v., p. 36. Mar 5:30, Mar 5:31.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii., No. 1640. Mar 5:33.—Ibid., vol. ix., No. 514; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., pp. 282, 283. Mar 5:34.—Ibid., p. 282. Mar 5:35.—Expositor, 1st series, vol. iv., p. 31; J. Baldwin Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., p. 407.
Mar 5:35-43
This part of the incident shows how two views may be taken of the same case.
I. There is the human view—the child is dead, trouble not the Master. Men see the outside; they deal with facts rather than with principles; they see the circumference, not the centre.
II. There is Christ’s view—only believe; man is called beyond facts, he is called into the sanctuary of God’s secret. We often put the period where God Himself puts only a comma; we say "dead" when God Himself says "sleepeth." The incident may be treated as showing three things:—(1) Christ not sent for until the last moment. (2) Christ misunderstood when sent for. (3) Christ never sent for in vain.
Parker, City Temple, 1871, p. 94.
References: Mar 5:35-43.—Homilist, new series, vol. iv., p. 64. Mar 5:36.—W. F. Hook, Sermons on the Miracles, vol. i., p. 269; T. Wallace, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 143; R. Thornton, Church of England Pulpit, vol. vii., p, 77. Mar 5:39-40.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii., p. 251. Mar 5:41-42.—New Outlines on the New Testament, p. 37. Mar 5:42.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 542. Mar 5:43.—J. Vaughan, Sermons, 8th series, p. 45.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain Mar 5:1 - Mar 5:20.
Mark
THE LORD OF DEMONS
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Mar 5:1 - Mar 5:20.
The awful picture of this demoniac is either painted from life, or it is one of the most wonderful feats of the poetic imagination. Nothing more terrible, vivid, penetrating, and real was ever conceived by the greatest creative genius. If it is not simply a portrait, Æschylus or Dante might own the artist for a brother. We see the quiet landing on the eastern shore, and almost hear the yells that broke the silence as the fierce, demon-ridden man hurried to meet them, perhaps with hostile purpose. The dreadful characteristics of his state are sharply and profoundly signalised. He lives up in the rock-hewn tombs which overhang the beach; for all that belongs to corruption and death is congenial to the subjects of that dark kingdom of evil. He has superhuman strength, and has known no gentle efforts to reclaim, but only savage attempts to ‘tame’ by force, as if he were a beast. Fetters and manacles have been snapped like rushes by him. Restless, sleepless, hating men, he has made the night hideous with his wild shrieks, and fled, swift as the wind, from place to place among the lonely hills. Insensible to pain, and deriving some dreadful satisfaction from his own wounds, he has gashed himself with splinters of rock, and howled, in a delirium of pain and pleasure, at the sight of his own blood. His sharpened eyesight sees Jesus from afar, and, with the disordered haste and preternatural agility which marked all his movements, he runs towards Him. Such is the introduction to the narrative of the cure. It paints for us not merely a maniac, but a demoniac. He is not a man at war with himself, but a man at war with other beings, who have forced themselves into his house of life. At least, so says Mark, and so said Jesus; and if the story before us is true, its subsequent incidents compel the acceptance of that explanation. What went into the herd of swine? The narrative of the restoration of the sufferer has a remarkable feature, which may help to mark off its stages. The word ‘besought’ occurs four times in it, and we may group the details round each instance.
I. The demons beseeching Jesus through the man’s voice.
He was, in the exact sense of the word, distracted-drawn two ways. For it would seem to have been the self in him that ran to Jesus and fell at His feet, as if in some dim hope of rescue; but it is the demons in him that speak, though the voice be his. They force him to utter their wishes, their terrors, their loathing of Christ, though he says ‘I’ and ‘me’ as if these were his own. That horrible condition of a double, or, as in this case, a manifold personality, speaking through human organs, and overwhelming the proper self, mysterious as it is, is the very essence of the awful misery of the demoniacs. Unless we are resolved to force meanings of our own on Scripture, I do not see how we can avoid recognising this. What black thoughts, seething with all rebellious agitation, the reluctant lips have to utter! The self-drawn picture of the demoniac nature is as vivid as, and more repellent than, the Evangelist’s terrible portrait of the outward man. Whatever dumb yearning after Jesus may have been in the oppressed human consciousness, his words are a shriek of terror and recoil. The mere presence of Christ lashes the demons into paroxysms: but before the man spoke, Christ had spoken His stern command to come forth. He is answered by this howl of fear and hate. Clear recognition of Christ’s person is in it, and not difficult to explain, if we believe that others than the sufferer looked through his wild eyes, and spoke in his loud cry. They know Him who had conquered their prince long ago; if the existence of fallen spirits be admitted, their knowledge is no difficulty.
The next element in the words is hatred, as fixed as the knowledge is clear. God’s supremacy and loftiness, and Christ’s nature, are recognised, but only the more abhorred. The name of God can be used as a spell to sway Jesus, but it has no power to touch this fierce hatred into submission. ‘The devils also believe and tremble.’ This, then, is a dark possibility, which has become actual for real living beings, that they should know God, and hate as heartily as they know clearly. That is the terminus towards which human spirits may be travelling. Christ’s power, too, is recognised, and His mere presence makes the flock of obscene creatures nested in the man uneasy, like bats in a cave, who flutter against a light. They shrink from Him, and shudderingly renounce all connection with Him, as if their cries would alter facts, or make Him relax His grip. The very words of the question prove its folly. ‘What is there to me and thee?’ implies that there were two parties to the answer; and the writhings of one of them could not break the bond. To all this is to be added that the ‘torment’ deprecated was the expulsion from the man, as if there were some grim satisfaction and dreadful alleviation in being there, rather than ‘in the abyss’-as Luke gives it-which appears to be the alternative. If we put all these things together, we get an awful glimpse into the secrets of that dark realm, which it is better to ponder with awe than flippantly to deny or mock.
How striking is Christ’s unmoved calm in the face of all this fury! He is always laconic in dealing with demoniacs; and, no doubt, His tranquil presence helped to calm the man, however it excited the demon. The distinct intention of the question, ‘What is thy name?’ is to rouse the man’s self-consciousness, and make him feel his separate existence, apart from the alien tyranny which had just been using his voice and usurping his personality. He had said ‘I’ and ‘me.’ Christ meets him with, Who is the ‘I’? and the very effort to answer would facilitate the deliverance. But for the moment the foreign influence is still too strong, and the answer, than which there is nothing more weird and awful in the whole range of literature, comes: ‘My name is Legion; for we are many.’ Note the momentary gleam of the true self in the first word or two, fading away into the old confusion. He begins with ‘my,’ but he drops back to ‘we.’ Note the pathetic force of the name. This poor wretch had seen the solid mass of the Roman legion, the instrument by which foreign tyrants crushed the nations. He felt himself oppressed and conquered by their multitudinous array. The voice of the ‘legion’ has a kind of cruel ring of triumph, as if spoken as much to terrify the victim as to answer the question.
Again the man’s voice speaks, beseeching the direct opposite of what he really would have desired. He was not so much in love with his dreadful tenants as to pray against their expulsion, but their fell power coerces his lips, and he asks for what would be his ruin. That prayer, clean contrary to the man’s only hope, is surely the climax of the horror. In a less degree, we also too often deprecate the stroke which delivers, and would fain keep the legion of evils which riot within.
II. The demons beseeching Jesus without disguise.
There seems to be intended a distinction between ‘he besought,’ in Mar 5:10, and they ‘besought,’ in Mar 5:12. Whether we are to suppose that, in the latter case, the man’s voice was used or no, the second request was more plainly not his, but theirs. It looks as if, somehow, the command was already beginning to take effect, and ‘he’ and ‘they’ were less closely intertwined. It is easy to ridicule this part of the incident, and as easy to say that it is incredible; but it is wiser to remember the narrow bounds of our knowledge of the unseen world of being, and to be cautious in asserting that there is nothing beyond the horizon but vacuity. If there be unclean spirits, we know too little about them to say what is possible. Only this is plain-that the difficulty of supposing them to inhabit swine is less, if there be any difference, than of supposing them to inhabit men, since the animal nature, especially of such an animal, would correspond to their impurity, and be open to their driving. The house and the tenant are well matched. But why should the expelled demons seek such an abode? It would appear that anywhere was better than ‘the abyss,’ and that unless they could find some creature to enter, thither they must go. It would seem, too, that there was no other land open to them-for the prayer on the man’s lips had been not to send them ‘out of the country,’ as if that was the only country on earth open to them. That makes for the opinion that demoniacal possession was the dark shadow which attended, for reasons not discoverable by us, the light of Christ’s coming, and was limited in time and space by His earthly manifestation. But on such matters there is not ground enough for certainty.
Another difficulty has been raised as to Christ’s right to destroy property. It was very questionable property, if the owners were Jews. Jesus owns all things, and has the right and the power to use them as He will; and if the purposes served by the destruction of animal life or property are beneficent and lofty, it leaves no blot on His goodness. He used His miraculous power twice for destruction-once on a fig-tree, once on a herd of swine. In both cases, the good sought was worth the loss. Whether was it better that the herd should live and fatten, or that a man should be delivered, and that he and they who saw should be assured of his deliverance and of Christ’s power? ‘Is not a man much better than a sheep,’ and much more than a pig? They are born to be killed, and nobody cries out cruelty. Why should not Christ have sanctioned this slaughter, if it helped to steady the poor man’s nerves, or to establish the reality of possession and of his deliverance? Notice that the drowning of the herd does not appear to have entered into the calculations of the unclean spirits. They desired houses to live in after their expulsion, and for them to plunge the swine into the lake would have defeated their purpose. The stampede was an unexpected effect of the commingling of the demonic with the animal nature, and outwitted the demons. ‘The devil is an ass.’ There is a lower depth than the animal nature; and even swine feel uncomfortable when the demon is in them, and in their panic rush anywhere to get rid of the incubus, and, before they know, find themselves struggling in the lake. ‘Which things are an allegory.’
III. The terrified Gerasenes beseeching Jesus to leave them.
They had rather have their swine than their Saviour, and so, though they saw the demoniac sitting, ‘clothed, and in his right mind,’ at the feet of Jesus, they in turn beseech that He should take Himself away. Fear and selfishness prompted the prayer. The communities on the eastern side of the lake were largely Gentile; and, no doubt, these people knew that they did many worse things than swine-keeping, and may have been afraid that some more of their wealth would have to go the same road as the herd. They did not want instruction, nor feel that they needed a healer. Were their prayers so very unlike the wishes of many of us? Is there nobody nowadays unwilling to let the thought of Christ into his life, because he feels an uneasy suspicion that, if Christ comes, a good deal will have to go? How many trades and schemes of life really beseech Jesus to go away and leave them in peace! And He goes away. The tragedy of life is that we have the awful power of severing ourselves from His influence. Christ commands unclean spirits, but He can only plead with hearts. And if we bid Him depart, He is fain to leave us for the time to the indulgence of our foolish and wicked schemes. If any man open, He comes in-oh, how gladly I but if any man slam the door in His face, He can but tarry without and knock. Sometimes His withdrawing does more than His loudest knocking; and sometimes they who repelled Him as He stood on the beach call Him back, as He moves away to the boat. It is in the hope that they may, that He goes.
IV. The restored man’s beseeching to abide with Christ.
No wonder that the spirit of this man, all tremulous with the conflict, and scarcely able yet to realise his deliverance, clung to Christ, and besought Him to let him continue by His side. Conscious weakness, dread of some recurrence of the inward hell, and grateful love, prompted the prayer. The prayer itself was partly right and partly wrong. Right, in clinging to Jesus as the only refuge from the past misery; wrong, in clinging to His visible presence as the only way of keeping near Him. Therefore, He who had permitted the wish of the demons, and complied with the entreaties of the terrified mob, did not yield to the prayer, throbbing with love and conscious weakness. Strange that Jesus should put aside a hand that sought to grasp His in order to be safe; but His refusal was, as always, the gift of something better, and He ever disappoints the wish in order more truly to satisfy the need. The best defence against the return of the evil spirits was in occupation. It is the ‘empty’ house which invites them back. Nothing was so likely to confirm and steady the convalescent mind as to dwell on the fact of his deliverance. Therefore he is sent to proclaim it to friends who had known his dreadful state, and amidst old associations which would help him to knit his new life to his old, and to treat his misery as a parenthesis. Jesus commanded silence or speech according to the need of the subjects of His miracles. For some, silence was best, to deepen the impression of blessing received; for others, speech was best, to engage and so to fortify the mind against relapse.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain The Gadarene Demoniac. Jairus' Daughter
The Gadarene Demoniac. Jairus' Daughter
1-20. The Gadarene (Gerasene) demoniac (Mat_8:28; Luk_8:26). See on Mt; Mk's account is much the fullest.
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1. Gadarenes] RV 'Gerasenes.'
9. Mk and Lk (not Mt) state that the man called himself 'Legion,' because he believed himself to be possessed by numerous devils.
18-20. Our Lord thought the quiet of home life better for the man than the excitement of going about with Him. He told him to proclaim the miracle, because in this mainly Gentile district there was no danger of popular excitement.
20. Decapolis] see on Mat_4:25.
21-43. The woman with the issue, and Jairus' daughter (Mat_9:18; Luk_8:40). See on Mt.
30. Knowing that virtue (peculiar to Mk and Lk).
37. Mk and Lk (not Mt) mention that Peter, James and John witnessed this miracle. These three were also privileged to be present at the Transfiguration and the Agony in Gethsemane.
41. Talitha cumi] (peculiar to Mk). St. Mark heard from St. Peter's lips the exact Aramaic words spoken by Jesus.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [LVI. Jesus Heals…
J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [LVI. Jesus Heals Two Demoniacs].
LVI. JESUS HEALS TWO GERGESENE DEMONIACS. (Gergesa, now called Khersa.) aMATT. VIII. 28-34; IX. 1; bMARK V. 1-21; cLUKE VIII. 26-40.
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b1 And they came to the other side of the sea [They left in the "even," an elastic expression. If they left in the middle of the afternoon and were driven forward by the storm, they would have reached the far shore several hours before dark], c26 And they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is over against Galilee. a28 And when he was come into the country of the Gadarenes. c27 And when he was come forth bout of the boat, cupon the land [Midway between the north and south ends of the lake, and directly east across the lake from Magdala, was the little city of Gergesa. In front and somewhat to the south of this city Jesus landed. Some sixteen miles away and to the southeast, and seven miles back from the lake, was the well-known city of Gadara. Further on to the southeast, on the borders of Arabia, and at least fifty miles from Gergesa, was the city of Gerasa. The name Gerasenes is, therefore, probably an error of the transcribers for Gergesenes, as Origen suggested. The region is properly called "country of the Gadarenes," for Gadara was an important city, and the stamp of a ship on its coins suggests that its territory extended to the Lake of Galilee], bstraightway there met him out of the tombs ca certain man out of the city [Gergesa], bwith an unclean spirit, cwho had demons; b3 who had his dwelling in the tombs: cand abode not in any house, but in the tombs. [The sides of the mountain near the ruins of Gergesa are studded with natural and artificial caves which were used as tombs.] band no man could any more bind him, no, not with a chain; 4 because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been rent asunder by him, and the [344] fetters broken in pieces: and no man had strength to tame him. 5 And always, night and day, in the tombs and in the mountains, he was crying out, and cutting himself with stones. [The natural spirit of the man seeking to throw off the dominion of the demons would cry out in agony, and the demons themselves, in their own misery, would use him as a vehicle to express their own grief. It would be hard to imagine a more horrible state] cand for a long time he had worn no clothes, b6 and when he saw Jesus from afar, che cried out, bhe ran cand fell down before him, band worshipped him; 7 and crying out with a loud voice, he saith, csaid, What have I to do with thee [on this phrase, see Rom_10:7, Rev_9:1, Rev_9:2, Rev_9:11, Rev_11:7, Rev_17:8, Rev_20:1, Rev_20:3. How these demons escaped from the abyss is one of the unsolved mysteries of the spirit world; but we have a parallel in the releasing of Satan-- Rev_20:1-3.] a28b And there met him two possessed with demons, coming forth out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man could pass by that way. [Matthew tells of two, while Mark and Luke describe only one. They tell of the principal one--the one who was the fiercer. In order to tell of two, Matthew had to omit the name "legion," which belonged to one; and conversely, Mark and Luke, to give the conversation with one, did not confuse us by telling of two.] 29 And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time? [The judgment-day, the time of punishment and torment-- Mat_25:41, 2Pe_2:4, Jud_1:6.] b11 Now there was there aafar off from them bon the mountain side a great herd aof many swine feeding. 31 And the demons besought him, cand they entreated him that he would give them leave to enter into them. asaying, If thou cast us out, send us away into the herd of swine. bthat we may enter into them. 13 And he gave them leave. a32 And he said unto them, Go. And they bthe unclean spirits cthe demons came out of the man, and entered aand went into the swine: and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep into the sea, cthe lake, bin number about two thousand; and they were drowned in the sea. aand perished in the waters. [About a mile south of Khersa a spur of the mountain thrusts itself out toward the lake so that its foot is within forty feet of the water line. This is the only spot on that side of the lake where the mountains come near the water. The slope is so steep and the ledge at its foot so narrow that a herd rushing down could not check itself before tumbling into the water. [346] Skeptics have censured Jesus for permitting this loss of property. God may recognize our property rights as against each other, but he nowhere recognizes them in the realm of nature. What was done to the swine was done by the demons, and the owners had no more right to complain than they would have had if the herd had been carried off by murrain, by flood, or by any other natural cause. All animals have a right to die, either singly or in numbers. The demons evidently did not intend to destroy the swine. Their desire to have live bodies to dwell in shows that they did not. But the presence of the demons in their bodies made the hogs crazy, as it had the demoniac, and they ran the way their noses were pointed at the moment. For discussion of demoniacal possession, see Mar_7:31-37.] cand he went his way, publishing throughout the whole city [Gergesa] how great things Jesus had done for him. band began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him [for the cities which constituted Decapolis, see page 173]: and all men marvelled. 21 And when Jesus had crossed over again in the boat unto the other side, a great multitude was gathered unto him: and he was by the sea. c40 And as Jesus returned, the multitude welcomed him; for they were all waiting for him. [They could see the sail of his boat as he started back.] a1 And he came into his own city. [Capernaum.] [348]
[FFG 344-348]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain Chapter 5
Chapter 5
1. The Servant’s Power over Satan’s work. (Mar 5:1-20. Mat 8:28-34; Luk 8:26-39.)
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2. The Servant’s Power over disease and death. (Mar 5:21-43. Mat 9:18-26; Luk 8:40-56.)
1. The Servant’s Power over Satan’s work. Mar 5:1-20
The Storm on the Lake was the work of Satan, but here the power of the enemy is more prominent. The description of the demoniac differs from Matthew’s and Luke’s account. His condition is described in fullest detail. He dwelt in the place of the dead. No one could chain him; Satan’s dominion and power cannot be conquered by the effort of man. Then there is self-torture and delusion in thinking of Christ as a tormentor. The complete identification of the legion of demons with this poor victim is seen in Mar 5:9. The power of the Lord delivers the man. This miserable world is still in the thraldom of Satan and his legion of demons. Demon possessions have not ceased. And the Lord Jesus Christ is still the same. The demons enter the swine by their own request and when granted the herd of swine rushed to destruction. This is an evidence of the character of the devil. He is the murderer from the beginning. But oh! the blessed change which had come for the demoniac. Delivered completely, in the attitude of rest, no longer rushing to and fro in torment, his nakedness covered and in his right mind. These are still the results of salvation. He would remain in constant fellowship with His deliverer. But the Servant demands service--and He announces directly what the Lord had done for Him. This is still the blessed privilege of all who have been delivered. They asked the Servant, with His loving Power to save to the uttermost, to leave their coast. “When the presence of God is felt, it is more terrible than that of Satan. Man would wish to free himself from the latter, but cannot; but the presence of God is insupportable when it makes itself felt, and indeed man has driven God (in the person of Christ) out of this world.” It shows once more the rejection of the Servant.
2. The Servant’s Power over disease and death. Mar 5:21-43
And now He manifests Power over disease and death. The daughter of Jairus was sick unto death. The willing Servant responds at once to the request of her father. While on the way the poor, suffering woman touches the hem of His garment. Mar 5:26 is found only in Mark. The Lord knows the touch of faith and healing power goes forth from Him. She is healed. The sick daughter had died, but the Lord raised her up. All has its blessed spiritual and dispensational lessons. Man is dead in trespasses and sins but One has power to give life and raise the dead. Faith is beautifully illustrated in the woman who touched Him. Jairus’ daughter represents Israel. The Lord will come again into this earthly scene and then will call the remnant of Israel to spiritual and national life. The woman, so hopeless, so helpless, suffering and getting worse, is typical of the Gentiles. The hand of faith can touch Him still. In Mar 5:43 we see once more how the Servant loved secrecy and despised ostentatiousness.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The Gadarene Demoniac.
The Gadarene Demoniac.
On the eastern shore of the lake:
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v. 1. And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes.
The journey across the sea, which ordinarily took only a few hours, was prolonged, on account of the storm, to last all night. The next day they landed in the country of the Gergesenes, or Gadarenes, which is over against Galilee, Mat 8:28; Luk 8:26. It was known by both names, from the chief cities of the neighborhood. "We read. that Jesus and His disciples ’came to the other side of the sea to the country of the Gerasenes. ’ The Authorized Version reads: ’to the country of the Gadarenes. ’ The country to which Jesus came at this time cannot have been that of the Decapolitan city Gerasa, for, as we have seen, that lay far to the south. It was in a direct line nearly fifty miles from the Sea of Galilee. Neither can it have been to the region of Gadara that He came, for Gadara lay at least five miles to the south across the deep valley of the Yarmuk. There was, however, on the east shore of the Sea of Galilee a town called Gergesa, the modern Kursi. This place was near the city of Hippos, and possibly one of the towns subordinate to Hippos. As Jesus and the disciples walked back from the sea, they met the demoniac, whom Jesus healed. " The whole region or district southeast of the Sea of Galilee was indiscriminately called that of the Gadarenes and Gerasenes. It was predominantly heathen.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
After Jesus calms the great storm, he heals a man who has many demons, but the local people in Gerasa are not glad about his healing, and they beg Jesus to leave.
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They came
The word "They" refers to Jesus and his disciples.
the sea
This refers to the Sea of Galilee.
Gerasenes
This name refers to the people who live in Gerasa. (See: How to Translate Names)
with an unclean spirit
This is an idiom meaning that the man is "controlled" or "possessed" by the unclean spirit. AT: "controlled by an unclean spirit" or "that an unclean spirit possessed" (See: Idiom)
translationWords
Sea of Galilee
Jesus
demon
demon-possessed
grave
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 5:1-20 Jesus and the disciples arrived at the other…
5:1-20 Jesus and the disciples arrived at the other side of the lake, completing the journey begun in 4:35. As in 1:21-28 and 3:11, the demons truly recognized (1:34) that Jesus was the Son of the Most High God. For the first time in the Gospel of Mark, a Gentile was the recipient of Jesus’ healing ministry (see study note on 5:10-13; cp. 7:24-30).
5:1 The region of the Gerasenes: Textual and geographical problems make the exact location uncertain. Manuscript evidence supports Gerasa, a city in this region located thirty-seven miles southeast of the Sea of Galilee (5:13). Some manuscripts read “Gadarenes”; Gadara was five miles southeast of the Sea of Galilee. A few manuscripts read “Gergesenes”; the town of Gergesa was located on a steep bank on the Sea of Galilee’s eastern shore.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.