Luke 8:34-39

The Effect produced.

First, on the people of the country; next, on the afflicted man. The owners of the herd dwelt in the city and neighbourhood. They came to convince themselves with their own eyes of the loss of which they had been informed by the herdsmen. On reaching the spot, they beheld a sight which impressed them deeply. The demoniac was known all through the country, and was an object of universal terror. They found him calm and restored. So great a miracle could not fail to reveal to them the power of God, and awaken their conscience. Their fears were confirmed by the account given them of the scene which had just occurred by persons who were with Jesus, and had witnessed it (οἱ ἰδόντες, Luke 8:36). These persons were not the herdsmen; for the cure was wrought at a considerable distance from the place where the herd was feeding (Matthew 8:30). They were the apostles and the people who had passed over the sea with them (Mark 4:36). The καί, also, is undoubtedly authentic; the latter account was supplementary to that of the herdsmen, which referred principally to the loss of the herd.

The fear of the inhabitants was doubtless of a superstitious nature. But Jesus did not wish to force Himself upon them, for it was still the season of grace, and grace limits itself to making its offers. He yielded to the request of the inhabitants, who, regarding Him as a judge, dreaded further and still more terrible chastisement at His hand. He consents, therefore, to depart from them, but not without leaving them a witness of His grace in the person of him who had become a living monument of it. The restored man, who feels his moral existence linked as it were to the person of Jesus, begs to be permitted to accompany Him. Jesus was already in the ship, Mark tells us. He does not consent to this entreaty. In Galilee, where it was necessary to guard against increasing the popular excitement, He forbade those He healed publishing abroad their cure. But in this remote country, so rarely visited by Him, and which He was obliged to leave so abruptly, He needed a missionary to testify to the greatness of the Messianic work which God was at this time accomplishing for His people. There is a fine contrast between the expression of Jesus: “What God hath done for thee,” and that of the man: “What Jesus had done for him” Jesus refers all to God; but the afflicted man could not forget the instrument. The whole of the latter part of the narrative is omitted in Matthew. Mark indicates the field of labour of this new apostle as comprising not his own city merely, but the whole of the Decapolis.

Volkmar applies here his system of allegorical interpretation. This incident is nothing, according to him, but the symbolical representation of the work of Paul amongst the Gentiles. The demoniac represents the heathen world; the chains with which they tried to bind him are legislative enactments, such as those of Lycurgus and Solon; the swine, the obscenities of idolatry; the refusal of Jesus to yield to the desire of the restored demoniac, when he wished to accompany Him, the obstacles which Jewish-Christians put in the way of the entrance of the converted heathen into the Church; the request that Jesus would withdraw, the irritation caused in heathen countries by the success of Paul (the riot at Ephesus, ex. gr.). Keim is opposed to this unlimited allegorizing, which borders, indeed, on absurdity. He very properly objects, that the demoniac is not even (as is the case with the Canaanitish woman) spoken of as a heathen; that the precise locality, so little known, to which the incident is referred, is a proof of its historical reality; that the request to Jesus to leave the country is a fact without any corresponding example, which does not look like imitation, but has the very features of truth. In short, he only objects to the episode of the swine, which appears to him to be a legendary amplification. But is it likely that the preachers of the gospel would have admitted into their teaching an incident so remarkable, if it could be contradicted by the population of a whole district, which is distinctly pointed out? If possession is only, as Keim thinks, an ordinary malady, this conclusion is certainly inevitable. But if there is any degree of reality attaching to the mysterious notion of possession, it would be difficult to determine à priori what might not result from such a state. The picture forms a whole, in which each incident implies all the rest. The request made to Jesus to leave the country, in which Keim acknowledges a proof of authenticity, is only explained by the loss of the swine. Keim admits too much or too little. Either Volkmar and his absurdities, or the frank acceptance of the narrative, this is the only alternative (comp. Heer's fine work, already referred to, Kirchenfreund, Nos. 10 and 11, 1870).