Luke 8:31

The KJV's the deep and the BSB's the Abyss render the same Greek word: abyssos. This verse — the demons of Gerasa begging Jesus not to send them into the bottomless pit — is the New Testament's first explicit witness that demonic powers fear a specific place of confinement, and that the man standing on the shore has the authority to put them there. The encounter is dense with theology. The demons themselves name what they fear (the abyss) and the one they fear it from. Their alternative — the herd of swine grazing on the hillside — is granted, and the herd runs to its drowning death in the lake. The man who had been possessed sits at Jesus's feet, clothed, and in his right mind. Mark and Matthew tell the same story (Mark 5:1-20; Matthew 8:28-34) with slightly different geography and detail. Across all three, the same point: Christ holds the keys to the abyss, and one word from him sends its inhabitants either back or further.

• Mark 5
• Matthew 8
• Revelation 9
• Luke 11