“And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,”
When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him — the man with the impure spirit meets Jesus at the moment of landing, before Jesus can reach any town or village. The encounter is immediate — the demonic realm has detected Jesus' arrival and responds before the disciples can even orient themselves in the new location. The tombs are ritually and socially significant: the man lives among the dead, in the place of corpse-impurity, outside the boundaries of living community. He is excluded from human habitation and exists at the furthest margins of social life — the exact person who has no access to the Jewish healing networks Jesus has been operating in Galilee.
Church Fathers on Mark 5:2
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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