‘And when he was come out of the boat immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs, and no man could any more bind him, no, not with a chain. For he had often been bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been torn apart 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.'
Jesus had come over for a rest and now He faced something the like of which He and His disciples had never seen before. This was not just a possessed man, but a man terribly possessed, living a life of misery and torment. Firstly we should note that he lived among the graves. The belief of the time was that graveyards were places where evil spirits lived, which may have been one thing that prompted his distorted mind to take up his dwelling there, but it was also likely that he did so because many tombs were caves which could provide adequate, if unpleasant, shelter (compare Job 30:6), and were generally avoided by men. It was somewhere where he could avoid the human beings who tormented him.
Secondly he had superhuman strength. All attempts to restrain him had failed. Fetters and chains were torn apart like string. And no one was willing, even as part of a group, to try to restrain him. He was a terror to all. (Such uncanny strength has often been noted of people in a similar state).
And thirdly he wandered among the tombs and went up into the mountains, crying out and cutting himself with stones. He was often no doubt seen from afar, a wild and desolate figure, and he would undoubtedly have been a person of wide renown. The cutting of himself with stones may simply have represented self-hatred, a not uncommon feature of such possessed people, or it may have been connected with demon rites (1 Kings 18:28; Leviticus 19:28; Deuteronomy 14:1). The fact that he is later described as ‘clothed' may suggest that he ran around naked. Nakedness is often a feature and consequence of severe clinical depression.
‘A man with an unclean spirit.' The spirit was ‘unclean' in contrast with the ‘cleanness' or purity of the Spirit of God. It was a spirit that hated God and all things to do with God, and shrank from His presence, and wanted nothing to do with Him. And it rendered the man ‘unclean' in Jewish eyes by his dwelling among the tombs. The man is specifically identified as demon possessed. It is probable that he was a Gentile (Consider Mark 5:20 and his close proximity to pig farms, abhorrent to orthodox Jews).
‘Immediately.' This does not necessarily mean on landing, but signifies that it was before He had time to do much else. It is a typical Marcan hurrying along of the narrative. On the other hand it was probably still dark on landing, so the man may have been engaged on his nightly wanderings, unwittingly drawn there by God.