When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. When the unclean spirit - If there had been no reality in demoniacal possessions, our Lord would have scarcely appealed to a case of this kind here, to point out the real state of the Jewish people, and the desolation which was coming upon them. Had this been only a vulgar error, of the nonsense of which the learned scribes and the wise Pharisees must have been convinced, the case not being one in point, because not true, must have been treated by that very people with contempt for whose conviction it was alone designed.
He walketh through dry places - Δι' ανυδρων τοπων. There seems to be a reference here to the Orphic demonology, in which evil spirits were divided into various classes, according to the different regions of their abode, or places in which they delighted. These classes were five:
1. Δαιμονες ουρανιοι, Celestial demons.
2. Δαιμονες ηεριοι, Aerial.
3. Δαιμονες ενυδριοι, Aquatic.
4. Δαιμονες χθονιοι, Terrestrial.
5. Και δαιμονες υποχθονιοι, And subterranean demons.
See Orph. ad Mus. ap. Schott. The Platonists, the followers of Zoroaster, and the primitive Jews, made nearly the same distinctions.
Seeking rest - Or refreshment. Strange! a fallen corrupt spirit can have no rest but in the polluted human heart: the corruption of the one is suited to the pollution of the other, and thus like cleaves to like.