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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
(Parallels: Mat_8:28-34; Luk_8:26-39)
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: ðáñÞããåéëå ãÜñ , 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: ἠëÝçóåí ).
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.
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 ἑëëçíæéüíôùí .) 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:
Mar_5:1.—Many Codd. read ἦëèåí instead of ἦëèïí . But this is not sufficiently authenticated: “probably from Mat_8:28.” Lachmann and Tischendorf, after B., D., Vulgate, read Ãåñáóçíῶí ; L., Ä ., &c., Ãåñãåóçíῶí ; Cod. A., Recepta, Scholz, Meyer, Ãáäáñçíῶí . Comp. the parallel in Matthew.
Mar_5:3.—‘ Áëõóåé , instead of ἁëýóåóéí , Lachmann, Tischendorf, after B., C., L. ÏὐêÝôé ïὐäåßò , Lachmann and Tischendorf, after B., C., D., L., Vulgate: strong negation.
Mar_5:5.—“In the tombs and upon the mountains,” is the best attested order: Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, Tischendorf.
Mar_5:9.—Instead of ἀðåêñßèç ëÝãùí (Elzevir), the better reading is ëÝãåé áὐôῷ .
Mar_5:12.— ÐÜíôåò (Elzevir) is wanting in B., C., D., L., Versions; ïἱ äáßìïíåò is wanting in B., C., L., Griesbach, Tischendorf.
Mar_5:13.—The ἦóáí äὲ is wanting in B., C.*, D., Syriac, Vulgate, Griesbach, and Tischendorf.
Mar_5:18.—A., B., D., Vulgate, Lachmann, Tischendorf. ἐìâáßíïíôïò .
Mar_5:19.— Êáὶ ïὐê , A., B., C.; Elzevir reads ὁ äὲ ’ Éçóïῦò ïὐê .