Passage
And behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Son of God? hast thou come here before the time to torment us?
Matthew 8:29 (DBY)
Nearby Context
Matthew 8:27 But the men were astonished, saying, What sort [of man] is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?
Matthew 8:28 And there met him, when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gergesenes, two possessed by demons, coming out of the tombs, exceeding dangerous, so that no one was able to pass by that way.
Matthew 8:29 And behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Son of God? hast thou come here before the time to torment us?
Matthew 8:30 Now there was, a great way off from them, a herd of many swine feeding;
Matthew 8:31 and the demons besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, send us away into the herd of swine.
Study Lenses
The verse centers on "behold", "cried", "saying", "thee", "hast", "thou", "come", and "here". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "behold" and "cried", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.
The nearby context moves from verse 28's "And there met him when he came..." into verse 30's "Now there was a great way off...", so "behold" and "cried" belong inside that flow. In Matthew context, the local focus is Christ, faith, and discipleship.
A plain takeaway is to answer the verse's own emphasis on "behold" and "cried" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.