And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way.
Ver. 28. Coming out of the tombs] There the devil kept them, the more to terrify them with the fear of death all their lives long, Hebrews 2:15. Appius Claudius (as Capella witnesseth) could not abide to hear the Greek Ζητα pronounced, because it represented the gnashing of the teeth of dying men. Chrysostom gives another reason hereof, that the devil hereby sought to persuade silly people that dead men's souls were turned into devils, and walked (as they call it) especially about tombs and sepulchres. Thus he often appeared to people, in times of Popery, in the shape of some of their dead kindred, and haunted them till he had made them sing a mass for such and such a soul. Melancthon tells a story of an aunt of his, that had her hand burnt to a coal by the devil, appearing to her in the likeness of her deceased husband. And Pareus relates an example (much like this poor demoniac in the text) of a baker's daughter in their country, possessed and pent up in a cave she had dug, as in a grave, to her dying day.