Jesus Encounters a Large Crowd

⁷ So Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea. A large crowd from Galilee, Judea, ⁸ Jerusalem, Idumea, from across the Jordan, and from the region around Tyre and Sidon followed him. They came to him because they kept hearing about everything he was doing. ⁹ Jesus^[a] told his disciples to have a boat ready for him so that the crowd wouldn’t crush him, ¹⁰ because he had healed so many people that everyone who had diseases kept crowding up against him in order to touch him. ¹¹ Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they would fall down in front of him and scream, “You are the Son of God!” ¹² But he sternly ordered them again and again not to tell people who he was.