The sea in the Gospels is never only a body of water. In Mark and Matthew, it is a boundary and a threshold between the towns of Galilee and a region shaped by Greek civic life, Roman administration, and Gentile custom. When Jesus crosses into the country associated with the Decapolis, the evangelists show the reign of God pressing into territory that Jewish hearers would have regarded as unclean. Matthew 8:30-33 records the herd of swine. Mark 5:1-17 narrates the man among the tombs, the name Legion, the drowning of the herd, and the plea that Jesus depart. Mark 7:31-37 returns to the same region and records the opening of deaf ears and a bound tongue. Read together, the episodes declare that the Holy One of Israel does not halt at the shoreline. He crosses, he commands, and he begins to restore what the fall has closed.
The Region Named for Ten Cities
The Δεκάπολις, the Decapolis, was a league of Hellenistic cities lying chiefly east and southeast of the Sea of Galilee, on ground associated in earlier Israelite memory with the half tribe of Manasseh. Pliny the Elder names Scythopolis, Philadelphia, Raphana, Gadara, Hippos, Dion, Pella, Gerasa, Canatha, and Damascus. Only Scythopolis lay west of the Jordan. The league took shape after Pompey’s settlement of Syria, and its cities answered in important respects to the Roman governor, minted their own coins, and cultivated Greek civic life. In Jesus's day, the population was predominantly Gentile. That fact explains the herd of swine. Pigs were unclean under the law of Moses (Leviticus 11:7; Isaiah 65:4; 66:17). Gentile owners were not bound by that statute. The herd signals that Jesus has stepped onto ground where Israel’s purity map no longer governs ordinary life.
The Gospels name the landing in ways that have long exercised copyists. Mark 5:1 in the English Standard Version reads, “Then they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes.” The underlying genitive is Γερασηνῶν. Matthew 8:28 reads, “to the country of the Gadarenes,” from Γαδαρηνῶν. Some manuscripts offer Γεργεσηνῶν. Gerasa lay well inland. Gadara stood nearer the water, and its territory reached the shore. The variation does not erase the setting. Mark 5:20 places the restored man’s proclamation ἐν τῇ Δεκαπόλει, “in the Decapolis,” and Mark 7:31 brings Jesus again εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν τῆς Γαλιλαίας ἀνὰ μέσον τῶν ὁρίων Δεκαπόλεως, “to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis.” Jesus has crossed to the Gentile side.
A Man Among the Tombs
Mark 5:2 states that immediately, εὐθύς, a man met him ἐκ τῶν μνημείων ἐν πνεύματι ἀκαθάρτῳ, “out of the tombs with an unclean spirit.” The phrase πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον is Mark’s preferred name for a demon. Uncleanness here is not merely a matter of diet. It is a personal power opposed to God's holiness, dwelling in a place of death. Numbers 19:11-16 treats contact with the dead as defiling. The man has made that place his house. Chains, ἁλύσεις, and shackles, πέδαι, have failed. No one had the strength, ἴσχυεν, to subdue him. Night and day he cried out and cut himself with stones. Matthew 8:28 compresses the scene and speaks of two demon-possessed men, χαλεποὶ λίαν, “so fierce that no one could pass that way.” The eastern shore has become impassable. Death, nakedness, self-harm, and supernatural violence occupy the ground Jesus steps onto when he leaves the boat.
His approach itself signals contested authority. He runs and falls down before Jesus, yet the voice that speaks is not a disciple’s confession. “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me” (Mark 5:7). The formula τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί is a Semitic idiom of dissociation. The title υἱὲ τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ὑψίστου is accurate and hostile. Matthew 8:29 adds a telling clause: “Have you come here to torment us before the time?” The phrase πρὸ καιροῦ confesses an eschatological calendar. The spirits know that judgment is appointed, and they protest that Jesus has arrived early. His coming intrudes the last day into the present.
Jesus had already been saying, ἔξελθε, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit” (Mark 5:8). He then asks, τί ὄνομά σοι; “What is your name?” The reply is Λεγιὼν ὄνομά μοι, ὅτι πολλοί ἐσμεν, “My name is Legion, for we are many” (Mark 5:9). A Roman legion was a large military unit, organized and accustomed to occupation. The name need not be pressed into a census of spirits. It announces multitude, order, and menace. A host has colonized one human life. Jesus exposes its size so that the scale of the deliverance will be plain. The spirits then beg, παρεκάλει, not to be sent out of the country. Luke 8:31 records their fear of the abyss, τὴν ἄβυσσον. A herd is feeding nearby, ἀγέλη χοίρων μεγάλη. They plead, πέμψον ἡμᾶς εἰς τοὺς χοίρους, “Send us to the pigs” (Mark 5:12). Evil would rather ruin animals than be restrained. The plea also discloses a limit. Demons do not cross even into swine without permission.
The Herd and the Steep Bank
Matthew 8:30-32 gives the scene its public sign. “Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them. And the demons begged him, saying, ‘If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs.’ 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.” Mark 5:13 numbers the herd at about two thousand. Mark says καὶ ἐπέτρεψεν αὐτοῖς, “And he gave them permission.” Matthew records the single commanding word ὑπάγετε, “Go.” The herd then ὥρμησεν, “rushed,” down the κρημνός, the steep bank, and were drowned, ἐπνίγοντο. What the spirits desired for the man, they accomplished at once in the animals. John 10:10 names the thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. The lake becomes a visible parable of that intention.
Jesus granted the request because the herd makes the malice public, and the loss of the swine confirms that the man is truly free. The episode also redraws the map of holiness. Swine on the eastern shore contradicted Israel’s food laws, yet the deeper cleansing is personal. Temporal goods are not ultimate. A city can count pigs more readily than it can count a restored neighbor. Jesus will not adjust the miracle to protect that calculation.
The herdsmen flee and report everything. The whole city comes out. Mark 5:15 records what they see: the man who had the legion, sitting, ἱματισμένον καὶ σωφρονοῦντα, “clothed and in his right mind.” The participle σωφρονοῦντα belongs to a word family of soundness and self-control, the opposite of the untamable violence in verse 4. Clothing covers shame. Sitting replaces roaming among the tombs. And they were afraid, καὶ ἐφοβήθησαν. Fear here is not praise. Mark 5:17 says they began to beg Jesus, ἤρξαντο παρακαλεῖν, to depart from their region. Matthew 8:34 agrees: “they begged him to leave their region.” The same verb family that the spirits used, and that friends will later use on behalf of a deaf man, is now used against Jesus. The city had tolerated a man who cried among the tombs. It cannot tolerate the one who clothed him. Many prefer a familiar darkness to a holy disruption. Jesus grants the request and enters the boat.
He does not leave the region without a witness. Though the cited unit in Mark ends at verse 17, verses 18 through 20 complete the theology of the crossing. The delivered man begs to remain with Jesus, ἵνα μετ’ αὐτοῦ ᾖ. Jesus does not permit it. “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you” (Mark 5:19). The man proclaims in the Decapolis ὅσα ἐποίησεν αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, “how much Jesus had done for him,” and all marveled. The first sustained Gentile testimony in Mark is borne by a man whose name is never given, sent back because those cities had asked Jesus to leave. Rejection does not cancel mission. It relocates it.
A Second Landing, and a Closed Ear
Mark 7:31 brings Jesus back. After the confrontation over purity, and after the faith of the Syrophoenician woman, “he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis.” The route is indirect. Jesus has been on Gentile soil, has located defilement in the heart, has answered a Gentile mother’s plea, and now reenters the Decapolis where a former demoniac has been preaching. Witness has prepared the soil.
“And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him” (Mark 7:32). The bringers are unnamed, as in Mark 2:3, where unnamed men carry a paralytic. The Gospel often advances through people whose names the church never learns. Their strength is in the verb παρεκάλεσαν. They begged and would not treat the need as casual. The condition is stated with two words that repay attention. He is κωφόν, deaf. In biblical Greek, κωφός can denote deafness or inability to speak. Mark clarifies with a second term found only here in the New Testament: μογιλάλον. It can mean speaking with difficulty, or mute. Its rarity is the clue. In the Septuagint it appears in Isaiah 35:6: τρανὴ ἔσται γλῶσσα μογιλάλων, “the tongue of the mute will be clear,” answering the Hebrew וְתָרֹן לְשׁוֹן אִלֵּם, “the tongue of the mute shall sing for joy.” Mark has already announced that the kingdom of God is at hand (Mark 1:15). He now uses a word his Scripture-knowing readers could hardly miss.
Isaiah 35:5-6 holds the wider promise. The English Standard Version reads, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.” The Septuagint opens the same hope with τότε ἀνοιχθήσονται ὀφθαλμοὶ τυφλῶν, καὶ ὦτα κωφῶν ἀκούσονται. Mark’s choice of μογιλάλος tells the church that the Decapolis miracle is one of those signs.
Fingers, Sigh, and the Word That Opens
Jesus takes the man aside, κατ’ ἰδίαν, away from the crowd. He will not make a spectacle of disability. Then he acts before he explains, because the man cannot hear an explanation. He puts his fingers into the man’s ears, spits and touches his tongue, looks up to heaven, sighs, and speaks. Touch identifies the closed places. The decisive act is not the moisture. It is the person who touches, and the Father toward whom he looks.
Mark 7:34 preserves both the gesture and the word. καὶ ἀναβλέψας εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἐστέναξεν καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ, Ἐφφαθά, ὅ ἐστιν, διανοίχθητι. “And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’” Ἐφφαθά is Aramaic, the ordinary speech of the region, retained in a Greek Gospel because the sound was unforgettable. Mark translates it with the aorist passive imperative διανοίχθητι, “Be opened.” The verb διανοίγω means to open thoroughly. The command addresses the man, yet it reaches the organs that have failed him.
The sigh must not be passed over. ἐστέναξεν is an aorist of στενάζω, to groan under a burden. Here he sighs over a closed ear and a bound tongue. The groan is the Creator's emotion before the wreck of his work. Jesus enters that groan. He feels the fall, and then he speaks against it.
The result is immediate. “And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly” (Mark 7:35). The Greek is precise. ἠνοίγησαν αὐτοῦ αἱ ἀκοαί, his ears were opened. ἐλύθη ὁ δεσμὸς τῆς γλώσσης αὐτοῦ, the bond of his tongue was loosed. The noun δεσμός is the language of chains, the same conceptual world as the fetters in Mark 5. A tongue can be bound as truly as a body among the tombs. καὶ ἐλάλει ὀρθῶς, he began to speak rightly, plainly. The adverb ὀρθῶς denies the former impediment. What Isaiah promised as a clear tongue has begun.
Verse 37 gives the crowd’s verdict in words that reach behind Isaiah to creation itself. ὑπερπερισσῶς ἐξεπλήσσοντο λέγοντες, καλῶς πάντα πεποίηκεν, καὶ τοὺς κωφοὺς ποιεῖ ἀκούειν καὶ τοὺς ἀλάλους λαλεῖν. “And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear, and the mute speak.’” The confession καλῶς πάντα πεποίηκεν echoes the cadence of Genesis 1:31, where God sees all that he has made and finds it very good. The Septuagint says καὶ εἶδεν ὁ θεὸς τὰ πάντα ὅσα ἐποίησεν, καὶ ἰδοὺ καλὰ λίαν. The Hebrew is וְהִנֵּה טוֹב מְאֹד. The one who opens ears in the Decapolis is described in language reserved for the Creator. The healing Isaiah tied to the coming of God is now predicated of Jesus.
One Crossing, Two Signs, One Reign
Set side by side, the passages show what the crossing means. On the first landing, Jesus confronts an unclean spirit in an unclean place, among tombs and beside swine. Λεγιών displays occupation. The verb ἐπέτρεψεν shows sovereignty, since Jesus' permission is a command. The rush down the κρημνός shows the true end of demonic power: destruction. The man who sits ἱματισμένον καὶ σωφρονοῦντα displays the true end of God's reign: a restored human being. The city’s plea that he leave displays the scandal of that reign. The sent man displays its patience. Mission continues through the witness: Jesus refuses to take in the boat.
On the second landing, no legion is named. Friends beg. Jesus touches, sighs, and says Ἐφφαθά. The bond is loosed. The crowd reaches for creation language. Between the visits stands the preaching of the restored demoniac. The Decapolis is no longer only the place where Jesus was asked to leave. It is the place where Gentile ears begin to hear.
The holiness of Jesus moves toward cleansing, not contamination. He is not defiled by tombs or swine. The herd dies, the man lives, and the ear opens. Gentile soil is not outside Isaiah 35's promise. The later mission to the nations is anticipated on this shore. Oppression and disability remain distinct, yet both belong to one fallen creation. The church must not collapse every affliction into demonization, nor treat deliverance as foreign to the gospel. Response also divides. Friends bring the needy. A city begs Jesus to leave. A restored man is sent to speak. Proximity to power is not the same as welcome.
The deaf man is a particular sufferer, and also a sign. Apart from the word that opens, the gospel remains noise. Jesus' sigh is God's compassion over every life that cannot yet hear. The imperative διανοίχθητι still shapes conversion. Confession follows hearing, as Paul writes in Romans 10:17. The unnamed friends remain a pattern for the church. The Gerasene city remains a warning. We can prefer the herd. Jesus does not shout at a closed ear from the center of a crowd. He draws the man aside, looks to heaven, groans over the damage, and speaks a word the man can see and then hear. Psalm 121:1-2 supplies the posture: “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”
The spirits call him Son of the Most High God. The crowd says he has done all things well. The delivered man proclaims what Jesus has done and is heard as proclaiming what the Lord has done. The Decapolis does not yet possess the later creeds. It already possesses the facts those creeds will guard. The sea is crossed because the nations, i.e., the gentiles are not forgotten. The tombs are entered because death does not hold the field. The swine perish because destruction is not the destiny of those made in the image of God. The ear is opened because Isaiah's promise has found its yes in Jesus. The tongue is loosed so that, in a region that once asked him to leave, someone can say plainly what the crowd discovered: he has done all things well.
