In the fifth chapter of Mark, we read about Jesus’ encounter with a madman. The setting is the seaside town of Gadara, the land of the Gadarenes. Here, among the tombs, resides a crazed, tormented individual, who could not be restrained, for he’d broken every chain and lock placed upon him. During the day, he roamed the mountains, crying and weeping. At night, he haunted the tombs, cutting himself with stones, a blood offering to his tormentors. When Christ arrives, the wild man of Gadara does not attempt to harm his visitor; instead he runs to Christ, falling down to worship Him! This is not an ordinary act of penance though, for the spirits within the man cry out, “What have I to do with thee, Jesus, Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.” “What torment?” you might ask. We are told in the next verse, Mark 5:8, “For he [Jesus] said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.” Was the madman worshiping Christ? More likely, the entities within him recognized the Son, and they feared that He would command them to leave their earthly abode and go at once “out of the space between two places or limits.” No, this isn’t the translation you find in most Bibles. There, you might find that Legion feared being sent “out of the country,” but the word here is the Hebrew noun chora, which has as its first meaning, “the space between two places.”
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