And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with you, Jesus, you Son of God? are you come here to torment us before the time?
What.
2 Samuel 16:10 And the king said, What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah? so let him curse, because the LORD hath said unto him, Curse David. Who shall then say, Wherefore hast thou done so?
2 Samuel 19:22 And David said, What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah, that ye should this day be adversaries unto me? shall there any man be put to death this day in Israel? for do not I know that I am this day king over Israel?
Joel 3:4 Yea, and what have ye to do with me, O Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine? will ye render me a recompence? and if ye recompense me, swiftly and speedily will I return your recompence upon your own head;
thou Son.
Matthew 4:3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
Mark 3:11 And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God.
Luke 4:41 And devils also came out of many, crying out, and saying, Thou art Christ the Son of God. And he rebuking them suffered them not to speak: for they knew that he was Christ.
torment.
2 Peter 2:4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
Jude 1:6 And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
they shouted.
The demons' shouting indicates their agitation and fear in the presence of Jesus. This reaction underscores the authority and power of Jesus, as even the spiritual forces of evil are compelled to acknowledge Him. The loudness of their cry may also reflect the desperation and urgency of their situation, knowing they are in the presence of the one who has the power to cast them out and judge them.
“Have You come here to torture us before the appointed time?”
This question reveals the demons' awareness of eschatological judgment. They know there is an "appointed time" for their ultimate punishment, as referenced in Revelation 20:10, where Satan and his followers are cast into the lake of fire. The demons' fear of premature torment suggests their understanding of God's sovereign timeline and their inevitable defeat. This phrase also highlights the tension between the present age and the age to come, where Jesus' first coming initiates the kingdom of God, but the final judgment is yet to occur. The demons' question reflects their dread of Jesus' authority to execute judgment, even before the final eschatological event.
• The demons immediately recognize Jesus’ divine identity. Earlier encounters show the same confession: “I know who You are—the Holy One of God!” (Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34).
• Even hostile spirits cannot deny His sonship. When the disciples later worship Him, saying, “Truly You are the Son of God” (Matthew 14:33), they echo what the demons already knew.
• Their question means, “Why are You interfering with us?”—an admission that Christ’s presence threatens their hold on the region (compare Mark 5:10, where they beg not to be sent away).
• James 2:19 reminds us, “Even the demons believe—and shudder!” Their belief is factual yet devoid of repentance, underscoring that mere acknowledgment of truth is not saving faith.
• The verb pictures a loud, panicked shriek. Unclean spirits never meet Jesus calmly; His holy authority provokes terror (Mark 3:11: “Whenever the unclean spirits saw Him, they fell down before Him and cried out”).
• Their volume reveals desperation. Darkness must yield instantly to light (John 1:5), so the demons know resistance is futile.
• This intense reaction previews the final scene where “every knee will bow” (Philippians 2:10). Even rebels must publicly concede Jesus’ supremacy.
• “Appointed time” points to a fixed moment of judgment. Matthew 25:41 speaks of “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” while Revelation 20:10 pictures their ultimate torment.
• The demons admit God alone sets that timetable. Until then they roam, yet only within limits God permits (Job 1:12; Luke 8:31, where they beg Jesus not to send them into the abyss).
• Their fear of “torture” (or torment) shows they already know the verdict. Second Peter 2:4 says God holds fallen angels “in gloomy dungeons,” and Jude 6 describes them as “kept in eternal chains.”
• Jesus’ presence thus previews the final day when He will exercise full judgment authority (John 5:22). His casting the spirits into pigs moments later (Matthew 8:32) is a foretaste of that decisive defeat.
Matthew 8:29 reveals that even demons:
• Acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God.
• Tremble at His immediate, sovereign authority.
• Understand a fixed future judgment they cannot escape.
The verse therefore magnifies Christ’s deity and power, assures believers of His ultimate victory over evil, and calls us to trust the One whom every spiritual force must obey.
(29) They cried out, saying . . .--St. Mark adds that the demoniac, seeing Jesus from afar, ran and did homage ("worshipped" in the English version) to Him, and (with St. Luke) gives the fuller form of his cry, "What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the Most High God?" It is remarkable that this is the only instance in which that name is addressed to our Lord, though it is used of Him before His birth in Luke 1:32. A probable explanation is, that the name "the Most High God" was frequently used in the formulae of exorcism, and so had become familiar to the demoniacs. So, the damsel with a spirit of divination, in Acts 16:17, speaks of St. Paul and his companions as servants of the Most High God. The question meets us. Was the discernment that led to the confession altogether preternatural, or had the possessed man heard of the fame of Jesus? But if he had only heard, how came he to recognise the Prophet "a great way off?" Possibly the true explanation lies involved in the mystery of the psychological state into which the sufferer had passed under the frightful influences that were working in him.To torment us before the time.--So the abode of Dives is "a place of torment" (Luke 16:28), and the ministers of judgment are the "tormentors" (Matthew 18:34). The man identifies himself with the demons; looks forward, when the hour of judgment shall come, to condemnation; and claims, in the meantime, to be let alone. Who that has been called to minister to the souls of men in their demoniac state has not often heard language all but identical? The words added by St. Mark are singularly characteristic: "I adjure thee by God." It is as if the man had listened so often to the formulae of exorcists that they had become, as it were, his natural speech, and he too will try their effect as an adjuration. The command given to the "unclean spirit" to "come out of the man" had, we find from St. Mark and St. Luke, been given previously, as the man drew near, and was the occasion of this frenzied cry.
At this stage, too, they add, our Lord asked the question, "What is thy name?" The most terrible phenomenon of possession, as of many forms of insanity, was the divided consciousness which appears in this case. Now the demon speaks, and now the man. The question would recall to the man's mind that he once had a human name, with all its memories of human fellowship. It was a stage, even in spite of the paroxysm that followed, in the process of recovery, in so far as it helped to disentangle him from the confusion between himself and the demons which caused his misery. But, at first, the question seems only to increase the evil: "My name is Legion, for we are many." The irresistible might, the full array of the Roman legion, with its six thousand soldiers, seemed to the demoniac the one adequate symbol of the wild, uncontrollable impulses of passion and of dread that were sweeping through his soul. It would hardly have seemed possible that the force of literalism could have led any interpreter to infer the actual presence of six thousand demons, each with a personality of His own, and to calculate accordingly the number that must have entered into each of the two thousand swine: and yet this has been done.
Verse 29. - And, behold. This probably seemed to the evangelist not the least of the many strange things that he introduced by this phrase. They cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee? (Τί ἡμῖν καὶ σοί; מה לנו ולד, frequent in the Old Testament, e.g. 2 Samuel 16:10). What community either of interest or of character? The deepest realization of personal sinfulness may coexist with absolute ignorance of the Divine love. Jesus. Omitted by the Revised Version here, yet genuine in the parallel passages, Matthew omitted from their utterance the name which (Matthew 1:21) indicated the bridging of the chasm between the sinner and God. Thou Son of God? Their sense of sin, their belief in a future torment, and their use of this phrase, alike point to their being Jews. Observe how great a contrast is implied by this term on the lips of demoniacs. As in 1 John 3:8 (cf. Bishop Westcott there), it brings out the nature of the conflict ("the spiritual adversary of man has a mightier spiritual antagonist"), so here. Art thou come hither - had they felt themselves safe in that distant spot and its gloomy surroundings, far away from all religious influence? - to torment us before the time? Their abject terror is still more evident in the parallel passages. Observe(1) the words are not given as those of the demons, but as the men's own;
(2) a future torment is assumed;
(3) they have no doubt as to their own share in it.
Parallel Commentaries ...