Luke 5:19

they went upon the housetop A very easy thing to do because there was in most houses an outside staircase to the roof, Matthew 24:17. Eastern houses are often only one storey high, and when they are built on rising ground, the roof is often nearly on a level with the street above. Our Lord may have been teaching in the "upper room" of the house, which was usually the largest and quietest. 2 Kings 4:10; Acts 1:13; Acts 9:37.

let him down through the tiling St Mark says they uncovered the roof where he was, and digging it up, let down -the pallet." Clearly then two operations seem to have been necessary: (i) to remove the tiles, and (ii) to dig through some mud partition. But the description is too vague to enable us to understand the details. Sceptical writers have raised difficulties about it in order to discredit the whole narrative (comp. Cic. Philippians 2:18, "per tegulas demitterere"), but the making of an aperture in the roof is an everyday matter in the East (Thomson, The Land and the Book, p. 358), and is here alluded to, not because it was strange, but to illustrate the active, and as it were nobly impatient, faith of the man and the bearers.

with his couch klinidion, -little bed," probably a mere mat or mattress. It means the same as St Mark's krabbaton, but that being a semi-Latin word (grabatum) would be more comprehensible to the Roman readers of St Mark than to the Greek readers of St Luke.