Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Mark · About this commentary
Legion
Mark 5:1-20
1 They came to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. · WEB
The strongest case of bondage in the book meets the stronger man — and the healed man becomes the first missionary to the Gentiles, sent home to tell.
He lived in the tombs. Nobody could bind him any more, not even with chains... Always, night and day, in the tombs and in the mountains, he was crying out, and cutting himself with stones Mark 5:3–5.
The far shore is Gentile ground, and its welcome is Mark's most complete portrait of what possession does to a person: home among the dead, strength turned wholly against himself, community reduced to failed restraints. Every binding society attempted had broken Mark 5:4; the man is a one-figure demonstration that the strong man's house cannot be emptied by chains Mark 3:27.
"What is your name?" He said to him, "My name is Legion, for we are many" Mark 5:9.
The demons know Jesus on sight and from afar — Jesus, you Son of the Most High God Mark 5:6–7 — the book's pattern of perfect demonic theology and abject demonic fear James 2:19. The name they surrender is a Roman military term: six thousand men. Against Legion, one word of permission Mark 5:13; the drowning of the herd states the arithmetic of the kingdom's power and, grimly, the demons' own economy — permitted their preference, they destroy what they inhabit.
They came to Jesus, and saw him who had been possessed by demons sitting, clothed, and in his right mind... and they were afraid. They began to beg him to depart from their region Mark 5:15–17.
The town's response is the story's second tragedy. Confronted with a man sitting, clothed, and in his right mind — the book's three-word definition of restoration — they calculate the cost in pigs and ask deliverance to leave. Two thousand animals against one human being: the region runs the numbers and chooses the herd. Jesus goes, as asked; there is no forcing of a door held shut, and the only judgment pronounced is the granted request.
He didn't allow him, but said to him, "Go to your house, to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you and how he had mercy on you" Mark 5:19.
The healed man begs to come along, and receives the book's one reversal of the silence command. In Jewish Galilee, tell no one Mark 1:44; here, where no messianic politics can catch fire, go... and tell — and the commission's shape is every believer's: not theology first but testimony, what great things the Lord has done for you. He becomes the Decapolis's resident witness Mark 5:20, the first person Jesus ever sent to preach — a Gentile ex-demoniac, announcing mercy in ten cities, so that when Jesus returns to that shore a crowd of four thousand is waiting Mark 8:1–3.
settled What this mark means