“And, behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus: and when they saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of their coasts.”
And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him, they begged him to leave their region. The whole city comes out, sees Jesus, and asks him to leave. The loss of the pigs outweighs the liberation of the two men in their calculation. The beggar who sought liberation (verse 2), the centurion who sought healing (verse 6), and the disciples who sought rescue from the storm (verse 25) — all of them came to Jesus with need and found it met. The Gadarenes come to Jesus and ask him to remove himself from their territory. The whole chapter has been a study in the varieties of response to Jesus: the excluded seeking inclusion, the powerful acknowledging authority, the fearful calling for rescue, and the economically aggrieved requesting departure.
Church Fathers on Matthew 8:34
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.