Mark 5:10

‘And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country.'

Once they had admitted that there were many of them they recognised that Jesus did not require their names in order to cast them out. He could command them all at a word. So the man, still controlled by the evil spirits, now pleaded that they might be allowed to enter some other physical bodies and not be sent out of the country to their terrible end, for they felt their need of a body and were aware that Gentile Decapolis presented their greatest hope. Surely the God of the Jews would not mind that? They possibly felt that Jesus would not mind them possessing Gentiles, and besides, comparatively few Jews were open to possession because of their beliefs. The evil spirits were still evasive and desperate. The words were the words of the man but the ideas were the ideas of the evil spirits.

‘Besought Him much' suggests that a rare verbal battle was now ensuing. It is probably here that the words expressed in Matthew in the plural are spoken. Each would want to be represented, and they were fighting for their very existence on earth. Note the order. First ‘what have we in common?', then their evasive declaration of their joint power, ‘my name is legion', then their plea not to be tormented before their time, then their plea to be allowed to stay in Decapolis, and finally their reluctant willingness to enter the pigs. Even now they had to recognise that they had failed in their attempts to intimidate Him.