Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? are you come to destroy us? I know you, who you are, the Holy One of God.
All Commentaries on Mark 1:24 Go To Mark 1
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
What have we to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art Thou come to destroy us? I know who Thou art, the Holy One of God. "What is there between us and Thee, 0 Jesus? We have not attacked Thee, 0 Christ, who art holy; but sinners, who are, as it were, our own. We have no contention with Thee; do not Thou, then, contend with and destroy us."
Come to destroy us. Some MSS. add, before the time. But the words are not found in the Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Arabic received texts. They seem to have been transferred hither from S. Matthew 9:25. With respect to the meaning, in the first place, Bede says that the demons, beholding the Lord upon earth, supposed that they were to be immediately judged. It was as though they said, "Do not Thou, 0 Jesus, by Thine advent bring on so quickly the day of judgment, and banish us to the bottomless pit without any hope of coming forth." Second, the Scholiast in S. Chrysostom says, "Thou givest us no place among men when Thou teachest divine things." But this is mystical. Third, and correctly, "Hast Thou come to destroy us, to cast us out from men, and send us to hell?" Whence Theophylact says, "He calls going out of men his destruction." For the highest pleasure of the devils is to possess and vex men.
I know, &c. Arab0 Holy One; the Gr.  ï¢×“יןע, emphatically, the Holy One. "Thou who art so holy that Thou communicatest Thy holiness to others, since Thou art, as it were, the Fountain and the Sun of holiness, who sanctifiest all the saints, the Messiah and the Son of God, for whom all are eagerly waiting so many thousand years!" There is an allusion to Daniel 9:24,"until the Holy of Holies, i.e, Messiah, be anointed."
I know, i.e, I suspect, I think. For, as the Scholiast in Chrysostom says, the devil had no firm and certain knowledge of the coming of God. Because, as S. Austin says (lib9 , de Civ. c21), He only made known to them as much as He wished; and He only wished as much as was expedient.
