“And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts.”
Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region — the community's response to the greatest miracle in the Gospels up to this point is a request for Jesus to leave. The pleading is as urgent as the demons' pleading — the same word (parakaleō) used for the Legion's begging is used for the community's request. The economic loss explains the response but does not exhaust it: the presence of someone who can do what Jesus has just done is more unsettling than the presence of a demon-possessed man who was at least predictable. The controlled wildness of the possessed man was a known quantity; Jesus is an unknown and uncontrollable quantity.
Church Fathers on Mark 5:17
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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