Mark 5

Mark 5 opens across the sea, in Gentile territory (the Decapolis). The Gerasene demoniac (5:1-20) is the most elaborately described exorcism in the gospel. The detail is precise and strange: the man among the tombs, the inability of chains to hold him, the night-and-day crying out and cutting himself with stones, the running to Jesus, the shrieking name Jesus Son of the Most High God. The exchange about the name — My name is Legion, for we are many — gives the possession its scale. The two thousand pigs rushing down the steep bank into the sea and drowning is a detail Mark preserves without commentary. The townspeople come out, see the man in his right mind, and are afraid; they beg Jesus to leave their region. His instruction to the man — go home, tell your people what the Lord has done for you, and how he had mercy on you — is the reversal of the messianic secret. The restoration of the man is announced rather than concealed, and the Decapolis hears it.

The two healings on the return (5:21-43) are interwoven with Mark's characteristic sandwiching technique. Jairus the synagogue ruler falls at Jesus' feet and begs him to come; the woman with the haemorrhage interrupts the journey; then the narrative returns to Jairus and the raising of his daughter. The haemorrhage healing (5:25-34) is notable for the detail that power had gone out from Jesus — a directional flow of healing force triggered by the woman's touch and faith, not by Jesus' deliberate act. The raising of Jairus's daughter (5:35-43) gives the Aramaic words verbatim: Talitha koum, which means little girl, arise. The instruction to give her something to eat is the most domestic detail in the gospel. The command to tell no one — in a house full of wailing mourners who have just seen a dead girl walk — is the messianic secret at its most paradoxical.