Luke 8:30-33

The Cure.

To this prayer, in which the victim became involuntarily the advocate of his tormentor, Jesus replies by putting a question: He asks the afflicted man his name. For what purpose? There is nothing so suitable as a calm and simple question to bring a madman to himself. Above all, there is no more natural way of awakening in a man who is beside himself the consciousness of his own personality, than to make him tell his own name. A man's name becomes the expression of his character, and a summary of the history of his life. Now, the first condition of any cure of this afflicted man was a return to the distinct feeling of his own personality.

There was at this time a word which, more than any other, called up the idea of the resistless might of the conqueror under whom Israel was then suffering oppression. This was the word Legion. The sound of this word called up the thought of those victorious armies before which the whole world bowed down. So it is by this term that this afflicted man describes the power which oppresses him, and with which he still confounds himself. The expression, many demons, is explained by the multiplicity and diversity of the symptoms (Luke 8:29).

To this answer the demoniac adds, in the name of his tyrant, a fresh request. The demon understands that he must release his prey; but he does not want to enter forthwith into a condition in which contact with terrestrial realities would be no longer possible to him.

In Mark there is here found the strange expression: “not to send them out of the country,” which may mean, to the desert, where unclean but not captive spirits were thought to dwell, or into the abyss, whence they went forth to find a temporary abode upon the earth. The sequel shows that the second meaning must be preferred. Jesus makes no answer to this request. His silence is ordinarily regarded as signifying consent. But the silence of Jesus simply means that He insists on the command which He has just given. When He wishes to reply in the affirmative, as, for instance, at the end of Luke 8:32, he does so distinctly. This explanation is confirmed by Matthew, “ If thou cast us out...” Their request to enter into the swine only refers, therefore, to the way by which they were suffered to go into the abyss. What is the explanation of this request, and of the permission which Jesus accorded to it? As to these evil spirits, we can understand that it might be pleasant to them, before losing all power of action, to find one more opportunity of doing an injury. Jesus, on his part, has in view a twofold result. The Jewish exorcists, in order to assure their patients that they were cured, were accustomed to set a pitcher of water or some other object in the apartment where the expulsion took place, which the demon took care to upset in going out. What they were accustomed to do as charlatans, Jesus sees it good to do as a physician. The identification of the sick man with his demon had been a long-existing fact of consciousness (Luke 8:27; Luke 8:29). A decisive sign of the reality of the departure of the evil power was needed to give the possessed perfect assurance of his deliverance. Besides this reason, there was probably another. The theocratic feeling of Jesus had been wounded by the sight of these immense herds of animals which the law declared unclean. Such an occupation as this showed how completely the line of demarcation between Judaism and paganism was obliterated in this country. Jesus desired, by a sensible judgment, to reclaim the people, and prevent their being still more unjudaized.

The influence exerted by the demons on the herd was in no sense a possession. None but a moral being can be morally possessed. But we know that several species of animals are accessible to collective influences, that swine, in particular, readily yield to panics of terror. The idea that it was the demoniac himself who frightened them, by throwing himself into the herd, is incompatible with the text.

Mark, whose narrative is always distinguished by the exactness of its details, says that the number of the swine was about two thousand. An item of his own invention, says De Wette; an appendix of later tradition, according to Bleek: here we see the necessary consequence of the critical system, according to which Mark is supposed to have made use of the text of the other two, or of a document common to them all.

The number 2000 cannot serve to prove the individual possession of the swine by the demons (legion, Luke 8:30), for a legion comprised 4000 men.

The question has been asked, Had Jesus the right to dispose in this way of other people's property? One might as well ask whether Peter had the right to dispose of the lives of Ananias and Sapphira! It is one of those cases in which the power, by its very nature, guarantees the right.