Intertextuality Pair
Luke 8:26-39 → Job 28:14
Echo
Later text
Luke 8:26-39BSB
Then they sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, across the lake from Galilee. When Jesus stepped ashore, He was met by a demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time this man had not worn clothing or lived in a house, but he stayed in the tombs. When the man saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before Him, shouting in a loud voice, “What do You want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You not to torture me!” For Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was bound with chains and shackles, he had broken the chains and been driven by the demon into solitary places. “What is your name?” Jesus asked. “Legion,” he replied, because many demons had gone into him. And the demons kept begging Jesus not to order them to go into the Abyss. There on the hillside a large herd of pigs was feeding. So the demons begged Jesus to let them enter the pigs, and He gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and went into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. When those tending the pigs saw what had happened, they ran off and reported this in the town and countryside. So the people went out to see what had happened. They came to Jesus and found the man whom the demons had left, sitting at Jesus’ feet, clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. Meanwhile, those who had seen it reported how the demon-possessed man had been healed. Then all the people of the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to depart from them, because great fear had taken hold of them. So He got into the boat and started back. The man whom the demons had left begged to go with Jesus. But He sent him away, saying, “Return home and describe how much God has done for you.” So the man went away and proclaimed all over the town how much Jesus had done for him.
Earlier text
Job 28:14BSB
The ocean depths say, ‘It is not in me,’ while the sea declares, ‘It is not with me.’
Significance
The whole of the contact between these passages is a single common noun. In Luke 8:31 the demons beg Jesus not to order them into the Abyss (ἄβυσσος, G12), and Job 28:14 LXX opens with ἄβυσσος εἶπεν — "the abyss said, 'It is not in me.'" That is the entire overlap, and the two uses are not even the same idea. Job 28 is a wisdom poem asking where understanding may be found; the deep and the sea are personified geographic extremities testifying that wisdom is not to be dug out of the created order at any depth. Luke 8:31 uses ἄβυσσος in its apocalyptic sense, as the place of confinement for evil spirits — the sense it carries in 1 Enoch, in Jubilees, and repeatedly in Revelation 9 and 20. The word is common Septuagintal vocabulary; it appears dozens of times, beginning at Genesis 1:2. Shared vocabulary of this kind establishes nothing, and asserting an intertextual relation from it would be exactly the error the vault's rule against arguing verbal similarity from surface matches exists to prevent. Luke does not cite Job, does not argue from Job, and gives no signal of having Job in view.
- Found via
- John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1763)
- Reference Type
- Echo
- Connection Method(s)
- None warranted
The genuine Old Testament substructure of the Gerasene exorcism lies elsewhere and is substantial. The man lives among the tombs, unclothed, uncontainable by chains, in Gentile territory beside a herd of pigs — a portrait assembled from Israel's uncleanness categories. Isaiah 65:1-5 is the closest text: a people "who sit among the graves and spend the night in secret places, who eat the flesh of pigs," saying "keep away, do not come near me, for I am holier than you." And the sea into which the herd plunges is the Old Testament's own image of chaos subdued by God alone — the deep that Yahweh rebukes and dries up (Psalm 106:9; Isaiah 51:10), which Luke has placed immediately before this scene in the stilling of the storm, so that the reader meets the one who commands the sea and then meets the one who commands the legion.
Recommended disposition: withdraw the Job 28:14 pairing. If a pair is wanted here, the warranted anchor is Isaiah 65:1-5. Retained here without deletion for judgment.
