Luke 8:26-39

See the contents of these verses explained at large, on Matthew 8:28; and Mark 5:1. I beseech thee, torment me not Let me continue where I am, and do not, before my time, cast me into the place of torments. For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man Being moved with pity at the sight of such a miserable spectacle; for oftentimes it had caught him Therefore our compassionate Lord had made the more haste to cast it out. That he would not command them to go into the deep This expression, the deep, in English, is invariably, the sea. In this sense it occurs often in Scripture. We find it in this gospel, Luke 5:4, where the Greek word, so rendered, is, το βαθος. That the sea is not meant here, is evident; for to the sea the demons went of themselves, when permitted, at their own request, to enter into the swine. The word αβυσσος, here used, evidently signifies the place where the wicked spirits are punished, as it does likewise Revelation 20:3, where it is translated, the bottomless pit. Indeed, it properly denotes a place without a bottom, or so deep that it cannot be fathomed. The Greeks describe their Tartarus in this manner: and the Jews, when they wrote in Greek, did not scruple to adopt their expressions, because they were universally understood. There was a herd of many swine feeding Within their view, though at a distance. They besought him to suffer them to enter into them Not that they could have any more ease in the swine than out of them: for had that been the case, they would not so soon have dislodged themselves, destroying the herd.