East of the Sea of Galilee, where basalt cliffs descend toward the water and roads angle toward the Jordan valley, the Gospel writers locate one of the Lord’s most startling works of mercy. Jesus crossed the lake after stilling a storm and stepped onto Gentile soil in the region associated with Gadara and Gerasa, where a tormented man lived among the tombs and dared no one to pass his way until the voice that calmed the wind and the waves commanded his captors to flee (Mark 4:39–41; Mark 5:1–5). The story has been called by many names—the healing of the Gadarene demoniac, the Gerasene demoniac, the deliverance among the swine—but Scripture’s interest is not in labels; it is in the Lord who chains the strong man and restores a human being to dignity in the presence of a fearful town (Mark 5:13; Mark 3:27).
A dispensational reading helps us see the layers of this encounter. Jesus’ earthly mission was directed first to “the lost sheep of Israel,” yet he intentionally crossed a boundary into a predominantly Gentile region and left behind a witness who published “how much Jesus had done for him” throughout the Decapolis, anticipating the Church’s worldwide mandate after the cross and resurrection (Matthew 15:24; Mark 5:19–20; Matthew 28:18–20). The event reveals the King’s authority over the unseen realm, honors the distinction between Israel and the nations in the timing of his ministry, and foreshadows the grace that would soon flow to all who call on his name (Mark 1:27; Romans 10:12–13).
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Historical and Cultural Background
The Decapolis was a league of ten Hellenistic cities east and south of the Sea of Galilee, established in the wake of Alexander’s conquests and later integrated into Rome’s provincial order. Gadara and Gerasa were prominent among them, with Greek culture, theaters, colonnades, and shrines shaping civic life; the region was largely Gentile in population and outlook, even as Jewish villages dotted nearby hills and valleys (Mark 5:20; Matthew 4:25). Gadara lay to the southeast of the lake on elevated ground, while Gerasa stood farther inland; the Evangelists speak of the “region” or “country” of the Gerasenes/Gadarenes, a territorial designation broad enough to include shoreline slopes where swine might rush into the water, a detail that fits Mark and Luke’s description of a “steep bank” toward the sea (Luke 8:32–33; Mark 5:11–13).
The presence of a large herd of pigs confirms Gentile economics and law. Swine were unclean to Israel under Moses, yet profitable for Gentile markets; herdsmen pastured them on hillsides where trade routes skirted the lake, and the loss of swine became a visible measure of what deliverance cost that day to a city that prized commerce (Leviticus 11:7–8; Luke 8:34–37). The Decapolis offered Rome loyal allies and offered the region Greek schooling, theater, and philosophy, but it also offered altars to many gods and bartered the souls of men for prosperity, a pattern Scripture elsewhere condemns in Tyre and other trading hubs (Ezekiel 27:2–3; Amos 1:9–10). This is the world to which Jesus came that morning—a world of polished public squares and haunted graveyards, of rational talk and irrational bondage, of wealth that could not ransom one tormented heart.
Geography matters for the narrative. The eastern shore of the lake is lined with tombs cut into rock and ravines that descend quickly to the water. Matthew identifies “the country of the Gadarenes,” Mark and Luke speak of “the region of the Gerasenes,” and some copies attest “Gergesenes,” a name that later writers used for a lakeside site; whatever the variant, the Evangelists agree that Jesus stepped into a Gentile-leaning district east of the lake where graveyards dotted the slopes and pigs grazed on the heights (Matthew 8:28; Mark 5:1; Luke 8:26). The mixed nomenclature should not distract from the unified portrait of place: the King of Israel confronted the powers in a borderland where Israel’s world met the nations’ world and where his authority proved sufficient for both.
Biblical Narrative
Mark’s account lingers over the man’s misery to magnify the Savior’s mercy. When Jesus came ashore, “a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him,” a man who lived among the graves, whom no one could bind anymore, not even with chains, who cried out night and day and cut himself with stones, a picture of isolation, violence, and self-harm that rings with the serpent’s hatred of the image of God (Mark 5:2–5). From a distance he ran and fell on his knees before Jesus and shouted, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!” for Jesus had said, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!” (Mark 5:6–8). In the mouth of an unclean spirit, Jesus’ identity is confessed, not as worship but as involuntary recognition of a superior, and the scene reminds us that demons “believe that there is one God” and shudder while remaining in proud revolt (James 2:19).
Jesus asked the name, and the reply came, “My name is Legion, for we are many,” a chilling indication of multiplied bondage and of a personality shattered beneath the weight of intruders who claimed the house as theirs (Mark 5:9). The spirits begged not to be sent out of the region or into the abyss but to enter a nearby herd of pigs, and Jesus gave them permission; the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned about two thousand in number, a public exorcism whose cost could be counted by the townspeople even as the value of a restored man could not (Luke 8:31; Mark 5:11–13). The herdsmen fled, told the city and countryside, and brought witnesses back to the scene; they saw the man “dressed and in his right mind,” sitting at Jesus’ feet, and they were afraid, a fear that led not to worship but to pleading that Jesus depart their district (Mark 5:14–17; Luke 8:35–37).
Matthew’s account notes two demonized men, not one, reminding us that the Lord often healed more than the most prominent sufferer and that the Evangelists select details for their theological aims without contradiction; Luke and Mark focus on the more prominent spokesman, while Matthew underscores the scale of Jesus’ authority by doubling the case (Matthew 8:28–32; Mark 5:2; Luke 8:27). The Synoptics agree on the essentials: the Lord commands and the spirits obey; the swine become a sign; the townspeople fear and ask him to leave; and a witness is commissioned to speak of the Lord’s mercy (Mark 5:13–20; Matthew 8:33–34; Luke 8:35–39). Where many begged Jesus to go, one begged to go with Jesus, and in that contrast the story finds its pastoral center.
The man’s request was simple and right. He who had been possessed “begged to go with him,” yet Jesus did not grant this desire, but appointed him as a herald in his own region: “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” The man obeyed and began to tell in the Decapolis “how much Jesus had done for him,” and all were amazed, a commission that turns a former mouthpiece of darkness into a voice for light (Mark 5:18–20; Luke 8:38–39). Later the Gospels tell us that crowds from the Decapolis came to Jesus, that he returned by way of those Gentile cities, and that a great multitude was fed on the eastern side of the lake, threads that suggest the healed man’s witness was not in vain when the Lord walked those roads again (Mark 7:31; Mark 8:1–10; Matthew 15:29–31). Seed sown among tombs had begun to grow on hillsides.
The miracle follows the stilling of the storm and precedes the raising of Jairus’s daughter, a trilogy of authority over chaos, demons, and death that reveals the King’s dominion on land and sea and in the realm of life and loss (Mark 4:35–41; Mark 5:21–24, 35–43). The One whom the winds obey is the One whom the spirits obey and the One whom death will obey; the sequence invites readers to ask with the disciples, “Who is this?” and to answer with the delivered man, “the Lord who has had mercy on me” (Mark 4:41; Mark 5:19).
Theological Significance
The deliverance in the country of the Gadarenes/Gerasenes displays the Messiah’s authority over the unseen powers, a theme the New Testament often places at the heart of his mission. Jesus came to “destroy the devil’s work,” to bind the strong man and plunder his house, to disarm the rulers and authorities, making a public spectacle of them by the cross, and to free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death (1 John 3:8; Mark 3:27; Colossians 2:15; Hebrews 2:14–15). When Legion fled, a signpost was planted on Gentile soil that the Stronger One had arrived and that the kingdom of God, advancing in Israel, would not stop at Israel’s borders (Luke 11:20–22; Matthew 12:28).
A dispensational lens preserves the order of this advance. Jesus declared his earthly mission to the lost sheep of Israel, sent the Twelve to Israel’s towns, and wept over Jerusalem’s unbelief, promising that the city would not see him again until it welcomed him with the words of Psalm 118, a statement that holds open Israel’s future repentance and reception of the King (Matthew 15:24; Matthew 10:5–7; Matthew 23:37–39). Yet within that Israel-first ministry, the Lord gave previews of Gentile inclusion—the centurion’s servant, the Samaritan village, the Syrophoenician woman, and this delivered man among the tombs—without collapsing the promises to Israel into the Church that would be formed after the cross and Pentecost (Matthew 8:10–13; Luke 9:52–56; Mark 7:26–29; Acts 2:1–4). In the Decapolis, Jesus left an apostle to his own people, a man whose testimony would run ahead of the Great Commission and make straight paths for later grace (Mark 5:19–20; Matthew 28:19–20).
The narrative also clarifies the nature of uncleanness and the reach of holiness. Tombs, swine, and demons compose a triple unclean setting under the Law, yet the Holy One does not contract defilement by presence; he expels it by command, proving that the purity of the kingdom radiates outward and that defilement cannot cling where the King reigns (Leviticus 11:7–8; Numbers 19:16; Mark 1:41–42). The healed man is found “dressed and in his right mind,” an image of clothed shame and restored sanity that anticipates the gospel’s pattern of conversion—putting off the old, putting on the new, sitting at the Lord’s feet to learn a new way of being human (Mark 5:15; Ephesians 4:22–24; Luke 10:39).
The drowning of the pigs has raised questions, but Scripture uses it as sign, not scandal. The herd’s rush into the lake dramatizes the destructive will of the powers that had occupied the man, makes visible the transfer of tyranny from man to animals, and underscores that the life of one image-bearer outweighs the market value of many herds, a valuation the townspeople did not share (John 10:10; Luke 8:33–37). The loss of animals stung a Gentile economy; the loss of fear from one man’s eyes pleased heaven more than many sacrifices, for the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost (Luke 15:7; Luke 19:10).
Finally, the commission to “go home” dignifies local mission in God’s plan. Not all are sent across seas; many are sent across thresholds, back to family and neighbors where former shame had alienated love. The Decapolis received its first evangelist from the cemetery gate, and the Church learns that the earliest field is often the most stubborn and the most strategic—home (Mark 5:19–20; Acts 1:8).
Spiritual Lessons and Application
This passage teaches that no bondage lies beyond the word of Christ. The man whom chains could not hold and whom society had abandoned to shrieks and stones bowed to a command, “Come out,” and was restored, testifying that the Son sets free indeed (Mark 5:8; John 8:36). Believers battle not against flesh and blood but against rulers, authorities, and powers of this dark world, yet they do so under a banner already raised in triumph at the cross, where principalities were disarmed; therefore they pray, resist, and stand in the full armor of God, confident in the Captain’s victory (Ephesians 6:12–13; Colossians 2:15; James 4:7).
It teaches that Jesus seeks out those others avoid. He crossed a storm-tossed lake to step onto a shore guarded by a man the town could not tame, and he did not flinch; he still crosses boundaries to reach the isolated, the self-harming, the spiritually tormented, and he often appoints those he frees as heralds to the very communities that once feared them (Mark 4:37–41; Mark 5:15–20). Churches that take their cues from their Lord will risk reputation and comfort to stand near tombs and speak peace.
It teaches that the love of possessions can harden hearts to the presence of God. When the townspeople saw the clothed man and counted the drowned pigs, they “pleaded with Jesus to leave,” choosing predictable profits over the unpredictable grace that disturbed their economy, a choice the Lord sometimes honors with departure (Mark 5:17). The warning is not against livestock but against calculating goodness only by what increases accounts, for “what good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36). Disciples learn to receive and release resources as stewards, not as slaves, so that when the Lord disrupts our herds, we ask what mercy has just walked ashore.
It teaches that testimony is a primary instrument of mission. The delivered man did not receive a seminary syllabus; he received a directive to tell “how much the Lord has done” for him and “how he has had mercy,” a message every Christian can prepare in prayer and deliver in love (Mark 5:19). The Decapolis heard of Jesus from a voice it used to dread, and that voice became a door through which many later walked when the Lord returned to those districts, a pattern that still holds when redeemed lives shine in former darkness (Mark 7:31; Matthew 5:16).
It teaches that Christ’s authority extends over territories and times. The demons begged not to be sent out of the region, as if they held leases on land; the Lord sent them where he willed, and the delivered man filled the region with news of the kingdom, as if to say that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it and that he intends to fill it with the knowledge of his glory (Luke 8:31; Psalm 24:1; Habakkuk 2:14). In the age of the Church, this authority fuels mission to “all nations,” while Israel’s promises remain anchored for the day when the King is welcomed in Jerusalem and the nations stream to learn his ways (Matthew 28:19–20; Zechariah 14:16; Romans 11:25–27).
Finally, it teaches the posture of a disciple toward Jesus’ will. The man begged to go with him and was refused; he obeyed the harder command to remain. Many of the Lord’s hardest assignments are not departures but stayings, and faithfulness at home becomes the seedbed of regional awakening. When we wish to be elsewhere and the Lord says “here,” obedience becomes worship, and worship becomes mission (Mark 5:18–20; Romans 12:1).
Conclusion
On a shoreline east of Galilee, holiness met horror and left mercy in its wake. The man no one could chain sat at Jesus’ feet clothed and clear-eyed, and an economy that prized pigs more than people begged the Savior to leave, while one grateful heart begged to follow and was sent instead to speak (Mark 5:15–20). The King who calmed the sea commanded the spirits and foreshadowed the gospel’s journey into Gentile lands without erasing the order of his work—first to Israel in fulfillment of promise, then to the nations through a Church born at Pentecost, and finally to a world where Israel’s long hopes will be realized when the King reigns and the earth rests (Romans 1:16; Acts 2:1–4; Acts 3:19–21).
Until that day, the Decapolis story stands as a lighthouse for every coast where darkness claims squatters’ rights. Jesus frees captives, re-orders economies under mercy, appoints unlikely heralds, and writes new chapters where tombs once told the tale. The Gadarenes first asked him to leave; the Church now asks him to come and to send, to do again what he did there—speak, and the storm will still; command, and the powers will flee; send, and the towns will hear how much the Lord has done (Revelation 22:17; Mark 5:19–20).
“Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.
(Mark 5:19–20)
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