And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.
This scene takes place in Gentile — that is, non-Jewish — territory east of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus had just crossed the lake by boat. He encountered a man who was severely tormented by evil spirits: he lived among burial caves, couldn't be controlled, and had been suffering for a long time. Everyone else had given up on him. Rather than walking away like the rest, Jesus approached and asked him a direct question: "What is your name?" The man answered through the demons possessing him — "Legion" — which was the name for a Roman military unit of thousands of soldiers, used here to convey the enormous scale of the man's torment. Jesus would go on to cast every one of them out.
Jesus, thank you for moving toward the people everyone else avoids. Teach me to see past what's broken on the surface and recognize the person underneath. Give me courage to stay present with people who are hard to be around. Amen.
Everyone else had stopped trying with this man. The townspeople had attempted chains, failed, and moved on. He was sleeping in tombs, screaming through the night, cutting himself with stones — by every social measure, beyond reach. And Jesus walks up and asks his name. Not "what's wrong with you?" Not a diagnosis. A name. In the ancient world — and still today — to ask someone's name is to say: you are a person, not a problem. That is not a small thing when everyone else has stopped seeing you as either. There are people in your life who have become defined entirely by what's broken in them — the addict, the volatile relative, the coworker everyone quietly avoids. Jesus modeled something genuinely countercultural here: he moved toward the person society had written off, and he asked for their name. Who in your world are you tempted to define only by their worst days? What would it look like to really ask?
Why do you think Jesus asked the man's name before doing anything else? What does that choice reveal about how Jesus approaches broken people?
Have you ever felt like you were too far gone — too complicated, too much, too broken — for God to care about? How does this story speak into that feeling?
The man was so consumed by his torment that the demons answered for him. What does it look like when pain, addiction, or trauma speaks louder than a person's true identity?
The townspeople responded to this man with fear and eventually restraint. How might your own fear shape the way you respond to people who struggle in ways you don't understand?
Who is one person in your life you have mentally written off? What would one small, concrete act of dignity toward them look like this week?
Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?
Matthew 26:53
Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.
Matthew 12:45
He was asking him, "What is your name?" And he replied, "My name is Legion; for we are many."
AMP
And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.”
ESV
And He was asking him, 'What is your name?' And he said to Him, 'My name is Legion; for we are many.'
NASB
Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.”
NIV
Then He asked him, “What is your name?” And he answered, saying, “My name is Legion; for we are many.”
NKJV
Then Jesus demanded, “What is your name?” And he replied, “My name is Legion, because there are many of us inside this man.”
NLT
Jesus asked him, "Tell me your name." He replied, "My name is Mob. I'm a rioting mob."
MSG