Matthew 12:43-45

When the unclean spirit, &c.— Our Lord here finishes his defence, alluding to the occasion of the dispute, Matthew 12:22 with a parable of a possessed person who, having had a devilor demon expelled out of him, received him back again, with many others, or was taken possession of by them, and thereby was brought into a worse condition than ever. By ανυδρων , dry places, are meant deserts. See Psalms 106:14; Psalms 70. Dr. Whitby and some others interpret this of the devils being cast out of Judaea, yet finding no rest in the deserts of heathenism, because there also the apostles cast them out: which drove them to return again to the Jews, and to make them worse than before. Dr. Doddridge thinks, that after the devil was driven out, he would be under a kind of restraint for a while; and that the circumstance of his going into desert places is beautifully imagined, to represent those malignant beings as impatientatthe sight of mankind, when restrained from hurting them, and as choosing on such occasions to seek their rest in the prospect of a sandy desert: but it is needless perhaps thus to stretch the minute circumstances of a parable: if the moral intended be clearly expressed by the chief strokes of it, a variety of lesser circumstances may without any particularsignification be added, to unite and enliven the principal members of the composition. In the interpretation of a parable, therefore, we are not under the least necessity of assigning a moral meaning to every particular circumstance; at the same time, if all of them naturally suggest such a meaning, the parable is so much the more perfect: in this of the ejected demon, the circumstance of his going away to deserts after he was dispossessed, may be one of the kind above mentioned. They who have read the sad account which Josephus gives of the temper and conduct of the Jews after the ascension of Christ, and just before their final destruction by the Romans, must acknowledge that no emblem could have been more proper to describe them, than that which our Saviour here uses. Their characters are the vilest that can be conceived, and they pressed on to their own ruin, as if they had been possessed by legions of devils, and wrought up to the last degree of madness. See Macknight, Calmet, and Chemnitz.