“And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They were imploring Him not to command them to go away into the abyss.

“Now there was a herd of many swine feeding there on the mountain; and the demons implored Him to permit them to enter the swine. And He gave them permission. And the demons came out of the man and entered the swine; and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

“When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they ran away and reported it in the city and out in the country. The people went out to see what had happened; and they came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting down at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind; and they became frightened. Those who had seen it reported to them how the man who was demon-possessed had been made well.”

Jesus, merciful to fallen angels, His sworn enemies? Is that what we must read into this very strange story? Perhaps not. The book of Psalms is clear about how God will deal with enemies that have gone too far and are lost forever. No mercy. No kindness.

But was it in the demons’ thinking that caused them to be so terrified in the first place? Our best understanding is that hell, or the “bottomless pit”, or as here, the “abyss”, is an incredibly awful place, far beyond our powers of comprehension. The rule of hatred and shame and fear and mercilessness. No shred of caring for the ongoing torment. No hope of parole or release. An eternal prison.

Yet for now, the demons who had inhabited the man we call “Legion”, the demoniac, were living in luxury by comparison to their coming fate. And they knew it. They also knew that, even though Lucifer is their “master”, the One before them now trumped Lucifer any day of the week. If He said “Go to the abyss and stay there,” they must go. It may not have entered their thinking that the waters into which they might be cast were only another entry point into Hell.

But we have a set-up here for another of those cases where what Satan’s workers wants, namely a little reprieve from their return to prison life, happens to be how God is best served also.

In the first place, if they are sent directly to the Pit, no one in the vicinity knows about it. They will know that the man is suddenly set free, but their whereabouts will be a mystery. So in a public display of the power and glory of God, Jesus grants their request. When the demons hit the pigs, the entire region suddenly knows that Someone powerful beyond words has showed up in Gadara.

So says one commentator.

Another suggestion is this: That God Himself intervened in this situation to send a message to pig farmers regarding the law He had instituted about the eating of swine. Here was judgment, publicly executed, on a man who dared not only to eat the product of pigs, but to sell that product to other Jews for their consumption.

Whatever the reason for Jesus “answering the prayer” of a group of demons, we must always remember that if “we pray anything according to His will, He hears us.” Fallen angels teach us that lesson here, loud and clear. It is God’s perfect will that we are after, and that He will have. Let us pray that will, and our prayers will be answered.

As for those demons, their free days will be over soon. Could be that this particular group in the story went to the abyss by way of the Sea of Galilee.