Jesus and his disciples came to the other side of the sea,
to the territory of the Gerasenes.
When he got out of the boat,
at once a man from the tombs who had an unclean spirit met him.
The man had been dwelling among the tombs,
and no one could restrain him any longer, even with a chain.
In fact, he had frequently been bound with shackles and chains,
but the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles smashed,
and no one was strong enough to subdue him.
Night and day among the tombs and on the hillsides
he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones.
Catching sight of Jesus from a distance,
he ran up and prostrated himself before him,
crying out in a loud voice,
“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?
I adjure you by God, do not torment me!”
(He had been saying to him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!”)
He asked him, “What is your name?”
He replied, “Legion is my name. There are many of us.”
And he pleaded earnestly with him
not to drive them away from that territory.
Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside.
And they pleaded with him,
“Send us into the swine. Let us enter them.”
And he let them, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine.
The herd of about two thousand rushed down a steep bank into the sea,
where they were drowned.
The swineherds ran away and reported the incident in the town
and throughout the countryside.
And people came out to see what had happened.
As they approached Jesus,
they caught sight of the man who had been possessed by Legion,
sitting there clothed and in his right mind.
And they were seized with fear.
Those who witnessed the incident explained to them what had happened
to the possessed man and to the swine.
Then they began to beg him to leave their district.
As he was getting into the boat,
the man who had been possessed pleaded to remain with him.
But Jesus would not permit him but told him instead,
“Go home to your family and announce to them
all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.”
Then the man went off and began to proclaim in the Decapolis
what Jesus had done for him; and all were amazed.
This passage tells us the story of the Garesene Demoniac. This man was a large and powerful strong man. He was possessed by many demons. In the Roman army, a legion was a 100 men. So this already strong man was probably almost superhuman, because of the demonic possession. There are two very interesting things that Jesus is telling us here, Lets dig into it.
First, Jesus is making reference to the previous chapter, where He accused the pharisees of binding up the strong man (ie. the jewish people) with many rules and heavy burdens, in order to plunder them of all of its treasures. In this passage Jesus is showing us that He is the one that has come to unbind the strong man, and free it to be how it was meant to be all along.
The other thing that is happening here, is to me, much more interesting. The deamons all thought that Jesus was there to destroy them, and as such, they wanted to escape that fate. They thought that they could trick Jesus by going into the swine, but Jesus was not a tricked. Instead Jesus wanted to both, deal with the deamons, while at the same time, teach these jews an important lesson.
These were Hellenistic jews. These Jews had made their living as hosts to pilgrims visiting the greek shrines and idols. These jews had forgotten the law and were living sinful synchonistic lives. The swine were illegal for jewish people to own, or even touch. So, tending to swine made them unclean too, and thus they were all sinning against the law.
So Jesus sent the demons into the swine, so that he could deal with both problems at the same time. First the demons, would be humiliated, being forced to stop possessing a strong man, and instead possess pigs, but the swine would also be destroyed to remind these jews of the Law and their first commitment to the Lord.
Losing the pigs (approximately 2000), would be the same as destroying their whole economy. Jesus killed their illegal economy (swine), but He gave them a new economy, an economy based around the law and the worship of the lord. If they do this instead, and trust in Him, they will be more prosperous than ever before, and they will be stronger too.
We don’t know what happened to these Garesenes, or if the Helenistic Jews ever repented, but it will be an interesting thing to ask God about when we meet him in heaven.
