They came to the other side of the sea, into the region of the Gerasenes.[1] 2 And as soon as Jesus stepped out of the boat, a man with an unclean spirit came out of the tombs and met him. 3 This man lived among the tombs, and no one could hold him down anymore, not even with a chain. 4 He had often been tied up with shackles and chains, but he would snap the chains and break the shackles to pieces. No one had the strength to control him. 5 Night and day, among the tombs and in the hills, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.
6 When he saw Jesus from a long way off, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. 7 Then he shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to me by God — don’t torture me!” 8 For Jesus had been saying to him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man.”
9 Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”
He answered, “My name is Legion, because there are many of us.”[2] 10 And he begged Jesus over and over not to send them out of the region.
11 Now a large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside. 12 The spirits pleaded with him, “Send us into the pigs. Let us go into them.” 13 So Jesus let them. The unclean spirits came out and went into the pigs, and the herd — about two thousand of them — rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned.
14 The men tending the pigs ran off and spread the news through the town and the countryside. People came to see what had happened. 15 They came to Jesus and saw the man who had been demon-possessed — the one who had the legion — sitting there, dressed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. 16 Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed man and about the pigs. 17 Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their territory.
18 As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. 19 But Jesus would not let him. He said, “Go home to your own people, and tell them everything the Lord has done for you — how he had mercy on you.”
20 So the man went away and began to spread the word through the Decapolis about all that Jesus had done for him. And everyone was amazed.
21 When Jesus had crossed back over in the boat to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him. He was beside the sea. 22 Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came up. When he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet 23 and pleaded with him earnestly. “My little daughter is dying. Please come and lay your hands on her so she will be saved and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him.
A large crowd followed and pressed in around him. 25 There was a woman there who had been bleeding for twelve years.[3] 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent everything she had, but instead of getting better she only grew worse. 27 She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak. 28 She kept telling herself, “If I can just touch his clothes, I will be saved.”
29 At once her bleeding stopped, and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
30 Jesus knew right away that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”
31 His disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you, and you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”
32 But he kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 The woman, afraid and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.
34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace, and be free from your suffering.”[4]
35 While he was still speaking, some people came from the synagogue leader’s house. They said, “Your daughter is dead. Why bother the teacher any longer?”
36 But Jesus overheard what they were saying and said to the synagogue leader, “Don’t be afraid. Just believe.”
37 He did not let anyone go with him except Peter, James, and John the brother of James. 38 They came to the synagogue leader’s house, and Jesus saw a commotion — people crying and wailing loudly.[5] 39 He went in and said to them, “Why all this noise and crying? The child is not dead. She’s asleep.”
40 And they laughed at him.
But he put them all outside. Then he took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took the child by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum” — which means, “Little girl, I tell you, get up.”[6] 42 At once the girl stood up and began to walk around. She was twelve years old.
And they were completely astonished. 43 Jesus gave them strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and he told them to give her something to eat.
Notes
Note 1. The name is a puzzle: Gerasa (modern Jerash) sits about 35 miles inland from the Sea of Galilee — far from any bank a herd could “rush down into the sea.” Gergesa (modern Kursi), a small site midway along the eastern shore where the land drops steeply to the water, fits the description better. The manuscripts themselves disagree, reading Gerasenes, Gadarenes, or Gergesenes. ↩
Note 2. A Roman legion at full strength numbered roughly five to six thousand soldiers. ↩
Note 3. Under the purity code of Leviticus 15, a woman with an ongoing flow of blood was considered ritually unclean, and so was anyone who touched her or what she sat on. This left her cut off from normal social and religious life for the whole twelve years. ↩
Note 4. One Greek word, sōzō, covers rescuing, healing, and saving — it does not separate the body from the rest of a person. The woman says to herself “I will be saved” (v28) and Jesus answers with the same verb: “your faith has saved you.” Older translations often print “made you well” here and “saved you” elsewhere, which hides the fact that it is one word. Luke tells this same scene and the same sentence (8:48). We render it “saved” everywhere. ↩
Note 5. First-century Jewish mourning was loud and public, and even a poor family was expected to hire professional mourners — wailing women and flute players — who gathered quickly after a death. ↩
Note 6. Mark keeps Jesus’ words in their original Aramaic, the everyday language he spoke, and then translates them for Greek readers. “Talitha” means a young girl, and “koum” is simply “get up” — an ordinary command spoken to a child, not an incantation. ↩