Why did Jesus Cast Demons Into the Pigs?

[TimothyH]

I guess I agree with you all.

The message I get is that many Jews had fallen away from their beliefs and were very sinful. This is shown by eating or raising double hoofed animals such as pigs. To show that God hates the sinfulness of His people, he cast the demons into the pigs and they went over the edge to their deaths by drowning. This is better than having His people die and the pigs were the substitutes. But in their sinfulness He was told to leave because they saw this as a threat to their personal economies of raising pigs which they should not be doing.

The Jews weren’t raising pigs.

Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee and was in the “District of the Gadarenes” which was Gentile land. It was not part of Israel. Jesus had left Israel and ventured into foreign, non-Jewish, pagan lands.

The herdsmen and townspeople were not Jews.

-Tim-

 

[mdcpensive1]

You noted that the Jews had departed from true worship of God and had fallen into various sins. As such, they were the lost sheep of the House of Israel.

You are right in one sense but I can also imagine the lost sheep being the ones not being taught properly by the Pharisees or the people of the ten lost tribes during the captivities… I guess I am saying there can be more than one level of understanding of the lost sheep.
(Got 99 but who is counting other than Jesus looking for the last one)

 

[TimothyH]

You noted that the Jews had departed from true worship of God and had fallen into various sins. As such, they were the lost sheep of the House of Israel.

The “Lost sheep of the house of Israel” were specifically the ten northern tribes which seceded from the two southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin in 1 Kings 12.

The ten northern tribes were known as the nation of Israel and the two southern tribes were known as the nation of Judah.

The ten northern tribes of Israel were conquered by Assyria in 722BC and many of the people were deported in the great exile. These never returned but instead took up the worship, diet and lifestyle of their captors, hence the lost tribes or the lost house. The people who were not exiled intermarried with the five nations which conquered them in succession, and these people were known as Samaritans. Jews considered Samaritan land and the Samaritan people as unclean. Jews would not even walk in Samaria but would go around on the other side of the Jordan River to get from Galilee to Jerusalem.

The “Lost sheep of the house of Israel” were the remnants of the ten northern tribes in Samaria and the Jews in dispersion who never returned from the exile. Jewish tradition was that the Messiah would return the lost tribes from exile, reunite the kingdom and reestablish a unified monarchy.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Lost_Tribes

-Tim-