Bible Synapse
Did the demons beg not to be sent out of the country or not to be sent into the deep?
Hard question · The life of Jesus · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
The demon gives the name Legion and “besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country”.
And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many. And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country.
The demons beg Jesus “that he would not command them to go out into the deep”.
And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him. And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep.
The objection
In Mark, the demons beg Jesus not to send them out of the country. In Luke, they beg him not to command them to go into the deep. Critics say the two Gospels report different requests.
The answer
The two requests are not alternatives; the demons made both, and each Gospel records part of their pleading. Mark says the man “besought him much” (Greek parekalei polla, ‘begged him earnestly’, again and again), and in the BSB of Luke the demons “kept begging”. Repeated pleading will naturally say more than one thing. What they feared was to be sent away from where they were and shut up in the abyss (Greek abyssos, ‘the deep’), which the New Testament describes as the prison of evil spirits (Revelation 9:1–2; 20:1–3). In Matthew they ask, “art thou come hither to torment us before the time?” (Matthew 8:29).
So ‘do not send us out of the country’ and ‘do not send us into the deep’ are two sides of one plea: let us stay here, not go there. Both Gospels then record the request that followed: since they must leave the man, let them go into the herd of swine feeding nearby, still in that country (Mark 5:12; Luke 8:32). Gill explains Luke in just this way.
From the classic commentators
they desired, that when they went out of this man, they might not be ordered thither, or remanded to their former prison; for they knew that if he gave the word of command, they must obey; but that they might be suffered to continue in that country, and range about on earthJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Luke 8:31 (1746–1763)