CRITICAL NOTES
Luke 8:26. Country of the Gadarenes.—Rather, “of the Gerasenes” (R.V.). There is no doubt that the place mentioned is Kerzha or Gersa—now a ruined city near the sea opposite to Capernaum. “Directly above it is an immense mountain in which are ancient tombs. The lake is so near the base of the mountain that the swine rushing madly down could not stop, but would be hurried on into the water and be drowned” (Thomson, “The Land and the Book”). The reading “Gerasenes” was formerly rejected because the only Gerasa then known was an important town fifty miles away from the Lake of Gennesaret. St Matthew has “Gadarenes” (Luke 8:28, R.V.). The town of Gadara, which is three hours’ journey distant from the south end of the lake, and separated from it by a deep ravine, probably gave its name to the district—“country of the Gadarenes.”
Luke 8:27. Met Him out of the city.—Rather, “there met Him a certain man out of the city” (R.V.): he was a native of Gerasa, but since his frenzy began had lived among the tombs. St. Matthew mentions two demoniacs. There is not necessarily any contradiction between the narratives, as St. Mark and St. Luke simply record the healing of the man in connection with whom there were many circumstances of special interest. In the tombs.—There were, in ancient times, no asylums in which such persons could be confined and cared for. The isolation, and neglect, and the dreary nature of his place of abode would naturally tend to aggravate his madness.
Luke 8:28. Son of God most high.—This title is only found in Luke 1:32, and in Acts 16:17, in which last case it is used by another demoniac. Torment me not.—The confusion of personality in consequence of the demoniacal possession is so great that sometimes it is the man who speaks, and sometimes the indwelling demon or demons.
Luke 8:29. Kept bound.—Rather, “he was kept under guard and bound,” etc. (R.V.). Wilderness.—Rather, “deserts” (R.V.).
Luke 8:30. What is thy name?—The question asked perhaps to awaken the man’s dormant consciousness. Legion.—The word is of course a Latin one, and came to be current in Palestine because of the Roman occupation. A legion consisted of six thousand soldiers. The fact of a multitude of evil spirits taking possession of one person is also alluded to in Luke 8:2 of this chapter and in Matthew 12:45.
Luke 8:31. The deep.—Rather, “the abyss” (R.V.). “The word is used in Revelation 9:1; Revelation 20:3, where it is translated “the bottomless pit,” and where it stands for the under-world, in which evil spirits are confined” (Speaker’s Commentary).
Luke 8:33. A steep place.—Rather, “the steep” (R.V.), the precipice; there being from all accounts but one place where this could have happened. Were choked.—Many difficulties of various kinds are connected with this miracle. One of them is as to the injustice of inflicting this loss upon the owners of the swine. The common explanation is that the loss was deserved, as the animals were unclean, and can only have been kept in violation of the Mosaic law. But, on the other hand, the population seems to have been of a mixed character, and the animals may have belonged to Gentile owners. One point seems, however, to have been generally overlooked, and that is that the destruction of the herd was not apparently a necessary consequence of their becoming possessed by evil spirits. So that the permission given to the evil spirits was not a deliberate infliction of loss upon the owners of the herd. It was simply a case of panic to which all herds of animals are liable, and for which no one can have been held responsible. The evil spirits seem to have been carried against their will into the abyss they dreaded to enter. We have no right to speak of Jesus as having authority to punish breaches of the law in virtue of His Divine character, as we have His own word that He resolutely abstained from exercising any judicial powers while on earth (cf. chap. Luke 12:14).
Luke 8:34. What was done.—Rather, “what had come to pass” (R.V.); so in Luke 8:35.
Luke 8:37. Taken with great fear.—Rather, “holden with great fear” (R.V.), or “oppressed with great fear.” Besought Him to depart.—Cf. with this Peter’s request (Luke 5:8), and the different feelings which inspired the similar prayers. Christ seems to have revisited the region at a later period: see Mark 7:31; Mark 8:10. Gadara was one of the ten cities in the district known as Decapolis.
Luke 8:39. The reason why Christ told this man to publish the tidings of his cure is not very apparent. It may be that He wished him to be a witness of His Divine power in the midst of a degraded and godless population. Christ they had entreated to depart, but among them was one who would be a living testimony of His beneficence.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Luke 8:26-39
The Lord of Demons.—The sufferer whom Christ healed was 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. The narrative of his restoration has a remarkable feature, which may help to mark off its stages. The word “besought” occurs four times in it (Luke 8:28; Luke 8:31; Luke 8:37-38), 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. The mere presenec of Christ lashes the demons to paroxysms; but, before the man spoke, Christ had given 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. They know Him who had conquered their prince long ago. 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. 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. The “torment” deprecated was expulsion from the man, as if there was some grim satisfaction and dreadful alleviation in being there, rather than in “the abyss,” which appears to be the alternative. How striking is Christ’s unmoved calm in the face of all this fury! No doubt His tranquil presence helped to calm the man, however it excited the demons. The distinct intention of the question, “What is thy name?” is to arouse 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. But for the moment the foreign influence is still too strong, and the answer comes, “My name is Legion: for we are many” (St. Mark). There is a momentary gleam of the true self in the first word or two, but it fades away into the old confusion.
II. The demons beseeching Jesus without disguise.—Why should the expelled demons seek to enter the swine? It would appear that anywhere was better than “the abyss,” and that unless they could find some body 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 it were 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. But destruction did not necessarily follow upon possession. 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 demoniacal with the animal nature, and outwitted the demons. 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 in the lake.
III. The terrified Gadarenes beseeching Jesus to leave them.—They had rather have their swine than their Saviour. 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 enter 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. 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! but if any man shut the door in His face, He can but tarry without and knock.
IV. The restored man’s beseeching to abide with Christ.—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. The best defence against the return of the evil spirits was in occupation. Therefore he is sent to proclaim his deliverance among friends who had known his dreadful state, and to renew 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.—Maclaren.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luke 8:26-39
Luke 8:26. “Country of the Gadarenes.—The connection is very striking in which this miracle stands with that other which went immediately before. Our Lord has just shown Himself as the Pacifier of the tumults and the discords in the outward world; He has spoken peace to the winds and to the waves, and hushed the war of elements with a word. But there is something wilder and more fearful than the winds and waves in their fiercest moods—even the spirit of man, when it has broken loose from all restraints, and yielded itself to be his organ who brings confusion and anarchy wherever his dominion reaches. And Christ will accomplish here a yet mightier work than that which He accomplished there; He will prove Himself here also the Prince of peace, the Restorer of the lost harmonies; He will speak, and at His potent word this madder strife, this blinder rage, which is in the heart of man, will allay itself, and here also there shall be a great calm.—Trench.
A Semi-heathen Population.—The region into which Christ had come was inhabited by a semi-heathen population, and both in the disobedience to the Jewish law manifested in the keeping of herds of animals reckoned as unclean, and in the earnest request proffered to Christ to depart from the district, we have indications of the spiritual condition of those to whom He now came to preach the gospel of the kingdom. Here where Satan was most obeyed the tyranny of his rule was manifested in its direct form.
Luke 8:27-28. “A certain man, which had devils.”—We have here one of the greatest dangers, no doubt, to which Jesus was exposed in the course of His life: He was face to face with uncontrolled brutal force. But the sight of His perfect calmness, and of His holy majesty, and of the profound compassion which was expressed in His countenance, affect this furious maniac; as he recognises the contrast between himself and the Saviour, there is awakened even in him a sense of his moral degradation. He feels himself at once attracted by, and repelled by, this Man who holds him under the control of His commanding eye. A crisis arises; it is declared by a loud cry; and then, like a wild beast in the presence of its tamer, the man runs forward and falls upon his knees, though at the same time he protests in the name of the spirit who possesses him against the power which is being exercised upon him.—Godet.
Luke 8:27. “Met Him.”—In the demoniac’s coming to meet Christ, and yet entreating to be let alone, we have a picture of a divided consciousness:
(1) an instinctive feeling that He was the Deliverer; and
(2) a sense of the awful gulf between the evil nature and the Son of the most high God.
“Abode … in the tombs.”—This wretched man was kept among the tombs by an unclean spirit, that he might have an opportunity of terrifying him continually with the mournful spectacle of death, as if he were cut off from the society of men, and already dwelt among the dead.—Calvin.
Luke 8:29. “Bound with chains.”—The evil spirit is strong enough to break all chains and fetters, and is overmastered only by the power of Jesus. So too on the moral and spiritual side of things an evil habit often cannot be controlled by considerations of health or propriety, or any of the restraints which reason and conscience and public opinion would impose; yet no evil habit is too strong for the power of Christ to fail to give deliverance.
Luke 8:30. “Legion.”—The name suggests not only numbers, but organised strength and tried courage—distinction of ranks and unity of purpose.
The Christian’s Armour.—Our Lord describes the enemy as “a strong man armed” (Luke 11:21-22). Hence the Christian who has to contend with him or his agents is furnished with weapons of warfare also: “the whole armour of God—girdle, breastplate, shield, helmet, and sword” (Ephesians 6:13-17).
Luke 8:31. “The abyss.”—The power of Jesus Christ extends over animals, demons, and the abyss. This the demons themselves acknowledge.—Bengel.
Luke 8:32. “That He would suffer them.”—The legion of devils would have had no power over the herd of swine unless they had received it from God: how much less will they have power over the flock of the Good Shepherd!
“And He suffered them.”—If this granting of the request of the evil spirits helped in any way the cure of the man, caused them to resign their hold on him more easily, mitigated the paroxysm of their going forth (see Mark 9:26), this would have been motive enough. Or still more probably it may have been necessary, for the permanent healing of the man, that he should have an outward evidence and testimony that the hellish powers which had held him in bondage had quitted him.—Trench.
Luke 8:33. “Ran violently down a steep place.”—God’s saints and servants appear not to be heard; and the very refusal of their requests is to them a blessing (2 Corinthians 12:8-9). The wicked Satan (Job 1:11) and his ministers and servants are sometimes heard, and the very granting of their petition issues in their worst confusion and loss. These evil spirits had their prayer heard; but only to their ruin.—Trench.
Luke 8:35. “Sitting at the feet of Jesus.”—Note the change: the frantic demoniac has become a meek disciple.
Luke 8:37. Tested and Found Wanting.
I. The Gadarenes tested—by the presence of Christ as the Bringer of spiritual blessings and the Deliverer from evil.
II. The Gadarenes found wanting: they had no desire to be delivered from their sins, and felt that the presence of a holy Being would only bring further mischiefs upon them.
Impatience at Loss.—How hard it is to recognise the hand of God in anything which interrupts our present enjoyment, brings us loss, and in any way interferes with our worldly prosperity! We overlook the actual blessings which mingle with the most afflicting dispensation. We do not consider how near we may have been brought, by chastisement, to the sacred person of our Lord. We simply are impatient and afraid. We desire nothing so much as to be as, and what, we were.—Burgon.
God’s Power and God’s Goodness.—The Gadarenes cannot endure to have Christ among them; but he who has been delivered from the unclean spirit is desirous to leave his own country and follow Him. Hence we may learn how wide is the difference between knowledge of the goodness and knowledge of the power of God. Power strikes men with terror, makes them fly from the presence of God, and drives them to a distance from Him; but goodness draws them gently, and makes them feel that nothing is more desirable than to be united to God.
“Taken with great fear.”—An example of slavish fear. Contrast the case of the Samaritans and the consequences. Fear is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10), but perfect love casteth out fear (1 John 4:18).
The Answered Prayer.
I. “Besought Him to depart.” This is one of the saddest sentences in the Gospels. We can scarcely conceive of any one asking Jesus to go away. He had come to bring blessings. He had begun His work of grace. He would have gone on to other gracious acts of love and mercy had they not besought Him to depart. It was probably all because of the loss of the swine.
II. Some feel like the Gadarenes when a work of grace begins in their community.—They are opposed to Christianity because it interferes with their business. They are against Christianity, because Christianity is against them. All of us are apt to want Christ to depart from us when He interferes with our cherished plans.
III. He complied with their prayer.—He did not stay after these people asked Him to go. He would not stay where He was not wanted. He carried back the gifts He had come there to leave. Does Jesus never turn away from any heart now because He is not wanted?—Miller.
“Besought Him to depart.”—Need we wonder that to those who persist for a whole lifetime in saying to the Saviour, Depart from us, He should, wearied out at length, Himself say in the end, Depart from Me?—Morison.
Luke 8:38. “That he might be with Him.”—Perhaps his motive was fear of a relapse, or it may have been gratitude for the deliverance he had experienced.
Luke 8:39. “Return to thine own house.”—In the person of one man Christ has exhibited to us a proof of His grace, which is extended to all mankind. Though we are not tortured by the devil, yet he holds us as his slaves till the Son of God delivers us from his tyranny. Naked, torn, and disfigured, we wander about till He restores us to soundness of mind. It remains that, in magnifying His grace, we testify our gratitude.—Calvin.
Home Religion.—We should be careful to carry religion into the home
(1) Because home is the place of the most sacred relationships.
(2) We need religion in our homes because the commonness and the constancy of the home-relationships are apt to induce in us a semi-forgetfulness of them.
(3) We need religion in the home because home is the most hopeful place for religious service.
(4) Home religion is the best test of the reality of one’s religion.
The Gadarene Missionary.—The saved man is sent first to his own house and friends.
I. Let all grace from Christ begin to tell at home.—If it cannot win its way there, it lacks some of its vital force.
II. The true method of the household missionary.—“Shew how great things,” etc. He has a story to tell of personal experience, of grateful love, of marvellous mercy. This—in his mouth—touches men’s hearts.
III. Success in the narrower leads to success in the wider sphere.—The mission was successful. Doing exactly as his Lord bade him, he was soon able to do more. The letter of his commission enlarged. In time he had told his story to all Decapolis. His doctrine enlarged as well as his diocese. He could not tell his story without giving Jesus all the praise, and he found that praising Jesus was giving glory to God, and so he preached a Divine Saviour. The most terrible sufferer from infernal power becomes a preacher of salvation to ten cities. A majestic entrance of the Sun of Righteousness into this region of the Shadow of Death! For though but a momentary gloom, a ray of light was left there. Jesus went a few hours to Gadara. He found a demoniac, and left a missionary.—Laidlaw.
“Jesus had done.”—This is a very natural and beautiful trait in the story. Jesus had given all the glory to God—had told him to return home and “declare how great things God had done for him.” He went his way and told how great things Jesus had done for him. He could not forget the Deliverer whom God had sent.