Bound in the Shadow of Death, Broken in Sunder
Old Testament: Psalms 106:10, 14
Such as sat in darkness and in the shadow of death: bound in want and in iron... And he brought them out of darkness, and the shadow of death; and broke their bonds in sunder.
New Testament: Mark 5:3-5, 15, 19-20
Who had his dwelling in the tombs, and no man now could bind him, not even with chains... he was always day and night in the monuments and in the mountains, crying and cutting himself with stones... they see him that was troubled with the devil, sitting, clothed, and well in his wits... Go into thy house to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had mercy on thee. And he went his way, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him.
The connection
The psalmist's picture is nearly a photograph of the Gerasene before Christ arrives: dwelling in darkness and the shadow of death, bound by a power no iron could hold. What the psalm records as God's ancient pattern of mercy toward exiles who cry out to Him, Mark shows enacted in a single man among the tombs, freed not by his own struggle, for he had burst every chain and stayed bound, but by a word. The psalm ends its stanza in praise; Mark's ending sends the freed man to do the same in his own country, publishing what great things the Lord had done for him.
Moral sense
Every soul has its own iron and its own tombs, the private darkness it circles without being able to break itself free of; deliverance in both texts comes only after crying out, never by self-effort.
Anagogical sense
The bonds broken in sunder look forward to the final breaking of death's whole empire, when all they that are of Christ are brought out for good.
Warrant
Mark 5 does not cite, name, or quote Psalm 106. The pairing rests on shared imagery of darkness, iron, and bonds broken in sunder. I could not locate a patristic source drawing this specific connection either. No Father was found joining the two texts, but each side has its patristic reader: St Bede, as the Catena Aurea gives him on Mark 5, reads the demoniac as the people of the Gentiles, who dwelt in the tombs "because they delighted in dead works, that is, in sins", and St Augustine, expounding this psalm, says it "is sung of the universal Church of God, spread through the whole world".
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 550.
The verses
Psalms 106:10 · Psalms 106:14 · Mark 5:3 · Mark 5:4 · Mark 5:5 · Mark 5:15 · Mark 5:19 · Mark 5:20
