Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 8:28

"And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gadarenes, there met him two possessed with demons, coming forth out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man could pass by that way." — Matthew 8:28 (ASV)

The country of the Gergesenes — The exact determination of the locality presents many difficulties. In all three Gospels, we find various readings, of which the best supported are “Gadarenes” in Matthew and “Gerasenes” in Mark and Luke. “Gergesenes” is, however,found in some manuscripts of high authority, and the variations are obviously of very early date. The main facts about the three regions thus indicated are as follows:

1. Gadara was a city east of the Sea of Galilee, about sixteen miles from Tiberias. It is identified with the modern Um Keis, the ruins of which are more than two miles in circumference and stand at the northwest extremity of the mountains of Gilead, near the southeast corner of the Lake. The tombs of the city—chambers in the limestone rock often more than twenty feet square—are its most conspicuous feature and are, indeed, the sole abode of its present inhabitants. Under the Roman occupation, it was important enough to have two amphitheaters and a long colonnaded street.
2. Gerasa was a city in the Gilead district, twenty miles east of the Jordan, described sometimes as belonging to Coele-Syria and sometimes to Arabia. It also has ruins that indicate the former splendor of the city. Of these two, it is clear that Gadara fits better with all the circumstances of the narrative. If “Gerasenes” is more than a transcriber's mistake, it could only be because the name was used vaguely for the whole Gilead district. The reading “Gadarenes” in that case would probably come from someone better acquainted with the position of the two cities.
3. There was no city named Gergesa, but the name Gergesenes was probably connected with the older Girgashites, one of the Canaanite races that occupied the country before the invasion of Israel (Genesis 10:16; Genesis 15:21; Joshua 3:10; Joshua 24:11; and elsewhere). Apparently, however, from the last passage referred to, they were on the western side of the Jordan. It is, on the whole, more likely that the reading was a mistake than that the old tribe still remained with its old name, but it is possible that the name of Gerasa may represent an altered form of Girgashim.

Two possessed with devils — Mark and Luke speak of only “one.” A similar difference meets us in Matthew’s “two blind men” at Jericho (Matthew 20:30) as compared with the “one” of the other two Gospels. The natural explanation is that, in each case, one was more prominent than the other in speech or act and so was remembered and specified, while the other was either forgotten or left unnoticed. The difference, as far as it goes, is obviously in favor of the independence of Matthew’s narrative. The “tombs” in the neighborhood of Gadara, hewn out of the rock, have already been mentioned. To the ordinary Jew, dwelling in such tombs was a thing from which he shrank with abhorrence as bringing pollution, and choosing such an abode was therefore a sign of insanity.

Luke adds that he wore no clothes (that is, strictly, no outer garment, as the word does not imply actual nakedness). Mark, whose account is the fullest of the three, notices that he had often been bound with fetters and chains and that, with the abnormal strength often found in cases of mania, he had freed himself from them. The insanity was so homicidal that “no one could pass that way” and so suicidal that he was constantly cutting himself with stones, howling day and night in the wildness of his fits.

For a full discussion of the subject of demoniacal possession, see the Excursus at the end of this Gospel.

III — DEMONIAC POSSESSION (Matthew 8:28)

1. As to the word, the Greek daimōn (the “knowing” or the “divider”) appears in Homer as interchangeable with Theos (God). In the mythology of Hesiod (Works and Days, 1.108), we have the first downward step, and the daimones are the departed spirits of the men who lived in the first golden age of the world. They are the good genii of Greek religion, averters of evil, and guardians of mortal men. The next stage introduced the neuter of the adjective derived from daimōn as something more impersonal. This term, to daimonion, was used by Plato as something “between God and man, by which the former communicates with the latter” (Symposium, 202). In this sense, Socrates spoke of the inward oracle whose warning he obeyed as his daimonion and was accordingly accused of bringing in the worship of new daimonia, whom the State had not recognized. The fears of men, however, led them to connect these unknown intermediate agents with evil as well as good. The daimōn of the Greek tragedians is the evil genius of a family, as in the case of Agamemnon's. A man is said to be under its power when he is swayed by some uncontrollable, frenzied passion that hurries him into guilt and misery. Such were the meanings that had gathered around the word when the Greek translators of the Old Testament entered on their task. They, as was natural, carefully avoided using it in any connection that would have identified it with the God of Israel. It appears in Psalm 90:3, where the English version gives “destruction”; in Deuteronomy 32:17 and Psalm 106:37, where the English version has “devils.” In this sense, it accordingly passed into the language of the Hellenistic Jews and so into that of the writers of the Gospels. Thus Paul speaks of the gods whom the heathen worshiped as daimonia (1 Corinthians 10:20).
2. As to the phenomena described, the belief of later Judaism ascribed to “demons,” in the sense the word had thus acquired, many of the more startling forms of bodily and mental suffering that the language of modern thought groups under the general head of “disease.” For instance, in the history of Tobit, the daughter of Raguel is possessed by the evil spirit Asmodeus, and he slays her seven bridegrooms . Passing on to the Gospel records, we find demonic agency as the cause of dumbness (Matthew 9:32), blindness (Matthew 12:22), epilepsy (Mark 9:17–27), or (as in this case, and in Mark 5:1-5) insanity. To “have a devil” is interchangeable with “being mad” (John 7:20; John 8:48; John 10:20). This was apparently part of a more general view that saw in all forms of disease the work, directly or indirectly, of Satan as the great adversary of mankind. Our Lord went about healing all that were oppressed of the devil (Acts 10:38). Satan had bound for eighteen years the woman who was crippled by a “spirit of infirmity” (Luke 13:16). And these “demons” are described as “unclean spirits” (Matthew 10:1; Matthew 12:43; and elsewhere) acting under a “ruler” or “prince,” who is popularly known by the name of Beelzebub, the old Philistine deity of Ekron, and whom our Lord identifies with Satan (Matthew 12:24–26). The Talmud swarms with allusions to such demons lurking in the air, in food, and in clothing, and working their evil will on the bodies or the souls of men. Paul refers to “demons” in this sense only once, where he identifies them as the authors of false doctrines that claim divine authority but actually come from “seducing spirits” (1 Timothy 4:1). Nevertheless, he seems to see the permitted agency of Satan in at least some forms of bodily disease, as in the case of the chastisement inflicted on the incestuous Corinthian (1 Corinthians 5:5; 2 Corinthians 2:11), his own “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7), and possibly in other similar hindrances to his work (1 Thessalonians 2:18).
3. The belief bore its natural fruit among the Jews of our Lord’s time. The work of the exorcist became a profession, as in the case of the sons of Sceva at Ephesus (Acts 19:13). Charms and incantations were used, including the more sacred forms of the divine name. The Pharisees appear to have claimed the power as one of the privileges belonging to their superior holiness (Matthew 12:27). Josephus narrates that an herb grew at Machaerus, the root of which had the power of expelling demons (which he defines as the spirits of wicked men), and that he had himself witnessed, in the presence of Vespasian, a man possessed with a demon being cured by a ring containing a root with similar properties. As proof of the reality of the dispossession, a vessel of water was placed at a little distance, which was overthrown by the unseen demon as he passed out from the man’s nostrils (Wars of the Jews 7.6.3; Antiquities of the Jews 8.2.5). The belief that demons were “the souls of the dead” lingered in the Christian Church, was accepted by Justin—who, coming from Samaria, probably received it from the Jews (First Apology, 1.65)—and was recognized as at least a common belief by Chrysostom (On Lazarus, 1.728).
4. Our Lord’s treatment of the cases of men “possessed with demons” stands out as both accepting the prevailing belief in its highest aspects and also contrasting with it. He uses no spells or charms but casts them out by His own divine authority, “with a word.” He delegates to the Twelve the power to “cast out demons,” as well as to cure diseases (Matthew 10:8). When the Seventy return with the report that the “devils” (that is, demons) were subject to them in His name, He speaks of that result as a victory over Satan (Luke 10:17–18). He makes the action of the demons the vehicle for a parable, in which first one and then eight demons are represented as possessing the same man (Matthew 12:43–45). It may be noted that He nowhere speaks of them, in the language of the later current beliefs of Christendom, as identical with the “fallen angels” or as the souls of the dead, though they are evil spirits subject to the power of Satan.
5. Many difficult questions obviously arise from these facts. Does our Lord’s indirect teaching stamp the popular belief with His authority? Or, knowing it to be false, did He accommodate Himself to their belief, speaking in the only way people could understand about His power to heal, teaching them as they were able to hear it (Mark 4:33)?

   If we answer the first question in the affirmative, are we to believe that possession was unique to that time and country? Have the “demons” (whether as souls of the dead or as evil angels) since been restrained by the influence of Christianity or the power of Christ? Or may we still trace their agency in the more obscure and startling phenomena of mental illness—in the delirium tremens of the drunkard, in the orgiastic frenzy of some Eastern religions, or in homicidal or suicidal mania?

   And if we go that far, is it a true theory of disease to assign it in all cases to the permitted agency of Satan? How can we reconcile that belief with either the disposition that receives sickness as “God’s visitation” or the one that seeks out its mechanical or chemical causes?

   Wise and good people have answered these questions very differently, and it may be that we do not have the data for an absolutely certain and exhaustive answer. It is well to remember two things. On the one hand, to label the phenomena of the Gospel possessions as mania, hysteria, or the like is merely to give them a name, not to assign a cause. Science, no matter how far it pushes its research into mental illness, must finally confess that it stands in the presence of unknown forces—forces often more responsive to spiritual influences than to any medical treatment. On the other hand, our Lord came to rescue people from the bondage of frenzy and disease, and so to prepare them for the higher work of spiritual renewal, rather than to rudely sweep away the people's traditional belief about their source or to proclaim a new psychological theory.