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MATTHEW 8:31 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
Matt 8:30Matt 8:32
“So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine.”
And the demons begged him, saying, If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs. The demons' request — send us into the pigs rather than into the abyss — reflects the reality that Jesus affirms by granting it: demons seek to inhabit bodies (verse 43 in Luke 11 suggests they wander without rest when unhoused). The choice of pigs is the choice of unclean for unclean; the consequence will be the destruction of the pigs. The demons negotiate with Jesus — which itself reveals his authority over them — and he grants the request, but the outcome is not what they sought.

Church Fathers on Matthew 8:31

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.'

Chrysostom · 4th century

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.

Rabanus Maurus · 9th century

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.

Augustine · 4th century · De. Cons. Evan., ii, 24
Read all 27 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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Matthew 8:31 — Community Reflections | HolyStudy