Chapter # 5 Paragraph # 1 Study # 9
January 18, 2021
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
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Thesis: What people "generally" do, when faced with an obviously self-induced disaster, is the opposite of what they "should" do.
Introduction: As we work our way deeper into Mark's extended record of the death of thousands of pigs, we discover that he was as "concerned" that his readers
respond properly to his record as he was about recording the facts. His way of expressing that concern was to contrast the "feeders" and their reaction to the exorcism of a legion of unclean spirits to the one who had been "demonized" by those spirits. The most obvious question is this: Why were the "feeders" so "fearful" for themselves and so thoughtless for the man who had been delivered from so horrible a "life"?
In our study this evening we are going to look into the "facts" so that we might see the reason for the responses.
- I. The Response of The "Feeders".
- A. "And those who are feeding them...".
- 1. This present tense participle means "focus your attention of these 'feeders of the pigs'".
- a. As "feeders of pigs", they were of the lowest cast of society's "people": Luke 15:15.
- b. As "feeders of pigs", they were the hirelings of those who made themselves wealthy by thumbing their noses at God's declaration that pigs were unclean.
- c. As "feeders of pigs", they were participants in the apostate condition of their employers.
- d. As "feeders of pigs", they were out of a job.
- e. As "feeders of pigs", they were subject to "terror" (5:15) when Jesus revealed Himself as "The Mighty One" Who used His might in their case to destroy their livelihood.
- 1) Their "terror" was legitimate: Hebrews 10:26-31.
- 2) By "feeding the unclean" (pigs), they were participating with the "unclean" (spirits), and turning the entire issue of "uncleanness" upside down: for them "the blood of the covenant" is unclean and the pigs are the basis for "life".
- 2. The aorist tense of the verb ("they ran away") signals exactly the opposite response that should have been theirs.
- a. Every one of Mark's uses of the verb translated "ran away" is in a context of "fear" of what "has happened", or "is happening", or "might happen".
- 1) In the previous paragraph, the disciples were "fearful" (4:41; the first use of "fear" by Mark), but they did not "run away"; they kept tagging along (besides, where would they have gone, being on the sea in a boat???).
- 2) Response is the critical issue in this part of the paragraph.
- b. But, by running away, they were putting some distance between them and Jesus, and, by that, making "Life" pretty much impossible to them.
- B. "...and they announced [the event] into the city and into the agricultural holdings...".
- 1. This strongly implies that the herd did not belong to one person, but to several who had hired men to graze them together on the mountain.
- 2. This implication is, itself, an implication: that the destruction of the herd was a major economic disaster to both the city and the owners of the pigs (as well as the "feeders" who were now without jobs).
- II. The Response of The Owners.
- A. They, naturally, came to see what had come to pass.
- B. And "coming" (present tense again) to The Jesus, they are beholding the demonized man.
- 1. He is sitting.
- 2. He is clothed.
- 3. He is of a sound mind.
- C. They, on the other hand, are "terrorized" because they get a second, more detailed, account of just what happened.
- D. And they, like their former "feeders of the pigs" want "distance" from Jesus for themselves and their "regions" (their "Horions"; a plural word that may well have derived from "mountain" and produced our term "horizons").
