“Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding.”
A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside — the presence of pigs confirms the Gentile setting: pigs are unclean animals that no observant Jewish household would keep. The large herd (about two thousand, according to verse 13) represents a significant economic investment for the herdsmen and their owners. The irony is available but not pressed by Mark: the unclean spirits in an unclean man are about to go into unclean animals. The three-fold uncleanness of the scene (Gentile territory, demon possession, pigs) communicates that the kingdom's reach extends to the most ritually impure context imaginable.
Church Fathers on Mark 5:11
Those who were in the ship enquired among themselves, 'What manner of man is this?' and now it is made known Who He is by the testimony of His enemies. For the demoniac came up confessing that He was the Son of God. Proceeding to which circumstance the Evangelist says, 'And they came over unto the other side, &c.'
Geraza is a noted town of Arabia, across the Jordan, near mount Galaad, which the tribe of Manasseh held, not far from the lake of Tiberias, into which the swine were precipitated.
Though Matthew says that there were two, Mark and Luke mention one, that you may understand that one of them was a more illustrious person, concerning whose state that country was much afflicted.
Read all 23 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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