“And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way.”
And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way. The crossing that terrified the disciples in the storm deposits them in the Gentile territory of the Gadarenes — a region associated with pigs (verse 30), a Gentile marker. The two demon-possessed men who emerge from the tombs are the extremity of human desolation: living in the place of the dead, possessed by forces that make them dangerous to everyone who passes. The tombs communicate death; the fierceness communicates violence; the no one could pass communicates the isolation that the demonic oppression has produced.
Church Fathers on Matthew 8:28
Because there were who thought Christ to be a man, therefore the daemons came to proclaim His divinity, that they who had not seen the sea raging and again still, might hear the daemons crying; 'And when he was come to the other side in the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two men having daemons.'
Gerasa is a town of Arabia beyond Jordan, close to Mount Gilead, which was in the possession of the tribe of Manasseh, not far from the lake of Tiberias, into which the swine were precipitated.
Whereas Matthew relates that there were two who were afflicted with daemons, but Mark and Luke mention only one, you must understand that one of them was a person of note, for whom all that country was in grief, and about whose recovery there was much care, whence the fame of this miracle was the more noised abroad.