“And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.”
And he said to them, Go. So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters. Jesus' single word — Go — and the entire herd rushes to destruction. The pigs in the sea recall the Egyptian army in the sea at the Exodus; the drowning of the forces of oppression in the waters is the liberation pattern repeated. The demons who sought to continue inhabiting bodies by moving to pigs find that the pigs' destruction leaves them without a home. The cost of the two men's liberation — two thousand drowned pigs — is the cost to the local economy that produces the community's response in verse 34.
Church Fathers on Matthew 8:32
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.