Chapter # 5 Paragraph # 1 Study # 7
January 5, 2021
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
(196)
1901 ASV
9 And he asked him, What is thy name? And he saith unto him, My name is Legion; for we are many.
10 And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country.
11 Now there was there on the mountain side a great herd of swine feeding.
12 And they besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.
13 And he gave them leave. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered into the swine: and the herd rushed down the steep into the sea, in number about two thousand; and they were drowned in the sea.
14 And they that fed them fled, and told it in the city, and in the country. And they came to see what it was that had come to pass.
15 And they come to Jesus, and behold him that was possessed with demons sitting, clothed and in his right mind, even him that had the legion: and they were afraid.
16 And they that saw it declared unto them how it befell him that was possessed with demons, and concerning the swine.
17 And they began to beseech him to depart from their borders.
18 And as he was entering into the boat, he that had been possessed with demons besought him that he might be with him.
19 And he suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go to thy house unto thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and how he had mercy on thee.
20 And he went his way, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men marvelled.
- I. A Continuation of Mark's Characterization Of The Confrontation of the Demoniac: 5:8-13.
- A. Mark organized his thoughts non-chronologically.
- B. Mark's major point: the unclean spirit(s) recognized Jesus' absolute authority over him/them.
- C. The Particulars of the Demoniac's Loud Cry (indicating emphatic content, needful of 'hearing').
- D. The issues of the name of the unclean spirit.
- 1. Jesus "was asking" (imperfect, indicative, active) the unclean spirit: "What name to you?"
- a. It is not as if Jesus did not already "know" the answer to this: He "knew" more about the "unclean spirit" than that spirit "knew" about Him.
- b. Thus, it behooves us to ask, "For what reason did Jesus ask what He already knew?", and Why does Mark cast it in the form of an on-going questioning?"
- 1) The reason of Jesus for "asking" was deliberately for the benefit of the disciples, and for Mark's later record for our benefit. Once asked and answered, the issue becomes that of the answer.
- 2) Mark's use of the imperfect is characteristically "emphatic"; to draw his readers into the event by allowing them to "see and hear" what happened as if they were actually there.
- 3) Thus, it is vitally important for us to understand the answer the unclean spirit gave.
- 4) Also, it is interesting that this is the first time Mark chooses to cast the issue into that of "questioning" (this verse has the first of twenty-five uses by Mark of the verb translated "ask").
- c. The crux of Jesus' question is the name: "What name to you?"
- 1) This "name" issue began to be a detail of Mark's record in 3:16-17 where we are told that Jesus assigned "names" to Peter and James and John which indicated His characterization of them (in the future for Peter, and in the present for James/John).
- 2) This is the second context wherein the word "name" is used.
- 3) Jesus is seeking an out-loud, verbal statement of 'essential characterization'. In Roman military organization it was a "Legatus legionis" who commanded the "legion".
- a) The legion was a force of somewhere between 5000 to 6000 men divided into ten cohorts.
- b) Thus, we may "assume" that the "unclean spirit" who was "spokesman" for the entire group of "unclean spirits" was the equivalent of the Legatus legionis who represented the entire Empire of Rome in a given region. (A "legion" was seen to be "the military force of the Roman Empire". There had once been 50 such before the coming of Jesus, but in His day there were 28 (somewhere between 140,000 and 170,000 soldiers).
- c) By way of comparison, at Jesus' arrest, He claimed the ability to "ask for and get" more than twelve legions of angels (Matthew 26:53) to deliver Him from the rabble who had come to arrest Him. Jesus' reference to "legions" is one of only four uses of "legion" in the entire New Testament.
- 4) Jesus' "point" for His disciples (and Mark's for us) is one: the opposition is a massive group of individually powerful spirits melded into a cohesive unit capable of a very large amount of opposition.
- a) Luke 8:30 says "...many demons had entered him...".
- b) It is possible that, from this Legatus, dominion over the entire region of the Decapolis was exercised (note Mark 4:10's "...not to send them out of the country..."). because that is where the man broadcast his testimony of what "The Lord", identified as "Jesus", had done for him.
- 2. The "issue" for the "Legion".
- a. Mark says this spiritual "Legatus" was asking Jesus "much" (many times, over and over, or "earnestly" as the NASB says).
- b. The essence of the request: Do not send us (plural pronoun) out of the region.
- 1) The implication is extremely strong: it was the "region" which the "legion" valued and the "legion" considered possession of the man's body a "primary" link to the "region" because the bodies of the pigs were seen by the "legion" as some kind of acceptable substitute.
- a) Mark's use of "region" (or "country") is easily "defined" by the first and last uses (two out of four) where specific geographical areas are called "regions" or "countries" (though "countries" is a misleading use of the English because of our typical grasp of "country").
- i. 1:5 identifies a "region" as "Judea".
- ii. 6:55 identifies a "region" as a geographical area conducive to carrying people on pallets (too ill to walk) to the specific location where Jesus was. This could not have been more than a few miles in diameter; but is called a "region".
- 2) The beseeching (imperfect indicative active of parakaleo) is yet another of Mark's uses of the imperfect to emphasize the action.