Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Mark 2:4
And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken [it] up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay.
4. they uncovered the roof ] They appear (1) to have ascended to the flat roof probably by a flight of steps outside (Luk 5:19); (2) to have broken up the tiling or thin stone slabs, sometimes used at this day; (3) to have lowered the paralytic upon his bed through the opening into the presence of the Great Healer. The room was probably an upper-chamber, which often extended over the whole area of the house. For other notices of such upper-rooms compare Act 1:13; Act 9:37; Act 20:8.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Mar 2:4
They uncovered the roof where He was.
Daring faith
These roofs are substantially built, as they need to be, since the whole family habitually walked and slept upon them. They broke up and uncovered a part of the roof. But one would have thought that even then they were as far off from Jesus as ever. It must have required a daring faith in those four men to conceive and carry out the course they took. They let down their neighbour in a bed, which they had slung to ropes, into the room where Jesus was talking with rabbis of all the schools, but they uttered no request. One would like to know the names of these four good men, good neighbours, good friends. The fact that we know not their names suggests to us that Christ cares for men whose names the world has never heard of, and never will hear; for the lowly and inconspicuous, no less than for the famous and the great. (S. Cox, D. D.)
Doing difficult work
When you cannot do a good thing, then is the very time to do it. If it cannot be done in one way, do it in another. If there is no way of doing it on the ground level, get up on to the roof and do it. Where there is a will, there is a way. The best work done in the world has been work that could not be done; and there is rarely a time when you ought not to do something that cannot be done-as it seems to you. (H. C. Trumbull.)
The potency of faith in Christian work
I. True faith is always concerned for the welfare of others. These men manifestly worked disinterestedly. So faith always acts; like the sister grace of charity, she seeketh not her own.
II. True faith always looks to Christ as the centre of its operations. Not forms or ceremonies, or ministers, or churches, or even the Bible itself, but Christ is the only Saviour of the lost.
III. True faith is fertile in expedients for overcoming difficulties. Have we exhausted all ingenuity in seeking souls?
IV. True faith meets with its appropriate reward. What a reward for their faith! Here is infinitely more than they ever expected (Eph 3:20). Learn-that faith is essentially practical; that religion is promoted by the exertions of believers; that to bring others to Jesus is the noblest achievement of man. (W. W. Smith.)
Faith seen by Christ
On none of these qualities did Christ fix as an explanation of the fact. He went deeper. He traced it to the deepest source of power that exists in the mind of man. When Jesus saw their faith. For as love is deepest in the Being of God, so faith is the mightiest principle in the soul of man. Let us distinguish their several essences. Love is the essence of the Deity-that which makes it Deity. Faith is the essence of Humanity, which constitutes it what it is. And, as here, it is the warring principle of this world which wins in lifes battle. No wonder that it is written in Scripture-This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. No wonder it is said, All things are possible to him that believeth. It is that which wrestles with difficulty, removes mountains, tramples upon impossibilities. It is this spirit which in the common affairs of life, known as a sanguine temperament, never says impossible and never believes in failure, leads the men of the world to their most signal successes, making them believe a thing possible because they hope it; and giving substantial reality to that which before was a shadow and a dream. It was this substance of things hoped for that gave America to Columbus, when billows, miles deep, rose between him and the land, and the men he commanded well- nigh rose in rebellion against the obstinacy which believed in things not yet seen. It was this that crowned the Mahomedan arms for seven centuries with victory: so long as they believed themselves the champions of the One God with a mission from Him, they were invincible. And it is this which so often obtains for some new system of medicine the honour of a cure, when the real cause of cure is only the patients trust in the remedies. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 4. They uncovered the roof] The houses in the east are generally made flat-roofed, that the inhabitants may have the benefit of taking the air on them; they are also furnished with battlements round about, De 22:8; Jdg 16:27; and 2Sa 11:2, to prevent persons from falling off; and have a trap door by which they descend into the house. This door, it appears, was too narrow to let down the sick man and his couch; so they uncovered the roof, removed a part of the tiles; and having broken it up, taken away the laths or timber, to which the tiles had been attached, they then had room to let down the afflicted man. See Lu 5:19, and on Mt 10:27; Mt 24:17.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
4. And when they could not come nighunto him for the pressor, as in Luke (Lu5:19), “when they could not find by what way they mightbring him in because of the multitude,” they “went upon thehousetop”the flat or terrace-roof, universal in Easternhouses.
they uncovered the roof wherehe was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bedorportable couch
wherein the sick of the palsylayLuke (Lu 5:19) says,they “let him down through the tilling with his couch into themidst before Jesus.” Their whole object was to bring thepatient into the presence of Jesus; and this not being possiblein the ordinary way, because of the multitude that surrounded Him,they took the very unusual method here described of accomplishingtheir object, and succeeded. Several explanations have been given ofthe way in which this was done; but unless we knew the precise planof the house, and the part of it from which Jesus taughtwhich mayhave been a quadrangle or open court, within the buildings of whichPeter’s house was one, or a gallery covered by a verandait isimpossible to determine precisely how the thing was done. One thing,however, is clear, that we have both the accounts from aneye-witness.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press,…. To the room where Jesus was, nor into the house, nor even to the door, the crowd about it was so great,
they uncovered the roof where he was. The Arabic version reads it, “they went up to the roof”; and the Persic thus, “they carried him up upon the roof”. The place where Christ was, seems to be an upper room; for in such an one the Jewish doctors used to meet, and discourse together about religious matters; see Ac 1:13. Though some think this was a mean house in which Christ was, and had no upper room, but the ground floor was open to the roof, through which the man, sick of the palsy, was let down on his bed to Christ; and the rather, because the people crowded about the door to get in, and there was no room to receive them, no not about it: but even from this circumstance it seems most reasonable, that there was an upper room in which Christ was, and at a window in which he might preach to the people, with much more convenience, than at, or about the door, where they were pressing: for, certain it is, that he did preach the word to them, Mr 2:2, and many instances may be given of the above mentioned doctors, whose usages, when indifferent, and not sinful, might be complied with by Christ, as these were, of their meeting and conversing together in upper rooms. Instead of many, take the few following a:
“It happened to Rabban Gamaliel, and the elders, who were sitting , “in an upper room in Jericho”, that they brought them dates, and they did eat, c,”
Again b,
“these are some of the traditions which they taught,
, “in the upper chamber” of Hananiah ben Hezekiah, ben Garon.”
So it is likewise said c, that
“R. Tarphon, or Tryphon, and the elders, were sitting “in the chamber” of the house of Nithzah, in Lydda, and this question was asked before them, is doctrine greatest, or practice greatest?”
Once more d,
“the elders of the house of Shammai, and the elders of the house of Hillell, went up, , “to the upper chamber” of Jochanan ben Bethira, and said, that the Tzitzith, or fringes, had no measure, c.”
Now, over this upper room, was a flat roof, with battlements about it for so the Jews were obliged to build their houses, De 22:8, to which they had a way of going to and from, both within and without side their houses [See comments on Mt 24:17]. Hence we so often read e of , “the way of the roofs”, in distinction from “the way of the doors”; by which they entered into their houses, and by which means, things might be carried from a court to a roof, and from a roof to a court; about which the doctors dispute, saying, that on a sabbath day f,
“it is forbidden to ascend and descend from the roofs to the court, and from the court to the roofs; and the vessels, whose abode is in the court, it is lawful to move them in the court, and which are in the roofs, it is lawful to move them in the roofs.–Says Rabbi, when we were learning the law with R. Simeon at Tekoah, we brought up oil, and a confection of old wine, water, and balsam, from roof to roof, and from roof to court, and from court to court, and from the court to a close, and from one close to another, till we came to the fountains, in which they washed. Says R. Judah, it happened in a time of danger, and we brought the book of the law from court to roof, and from roof to court, and from court to a close, to read in it.”
Now, in these roofs, there was a door, which they call, , “the door of the roofs” g; now when they had brought up the sick man to the roof of the house, by a ladder fastened on the outside, which was common h; they took up this door, and let him down in his bed into the room where Jesus was: and because they wrenched the roof door open with violence, therefore it is said,
and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay: opening the door, and perhaps taking up the frame of it, and removing some tiles about it, to make the way wider, they let down with ropes, the bed, and the man on it, together. The Persic version thus renders it, “and the paralytic man being put upon a bed, at the four corners of the bed so many ropes being fastened, they let him down through a window to Jesus, into the place where he was sitting”; which is rather a paraphrase, or exposition of the words, than a translation.
a T. Bab. Beracot, fol. 37. 1. b T. Bab. Sabbat, fol. 12. 1. & Misn. Sabbat, c. 1. sect. 4, c T. Bab. Kiddushin, fol. 40. 2. Vid. T. Hieros. Pesachim, fol. 30. 2. & T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 74. 1. d T. Bab. Menachot, fol. 41. 2. Vid. Targum in Cant. iii. 4. e T. Pesach. fol. 92. 1. Moed. Katon, fol. 25. 1. Cetubot, fol. 10. 2. Gittin, fol. 81. 1. Bava Metzia, fol. 88. 1, in 117. 1. f T. Bab. Erubin, fol. 91. 1. & Hieros. ib. fol. 25. 3. g T. Hieros. Erubin, fol. 26. 2. h Gloss. in T. Bab. Bava Metzia, fol. 117. 1.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Come nigh (). But Westcott and Hort read , to bring to, after Aleph, B, L, 33, 63 (cf. Joh 5:18).
They uncovered the roof ( ). They unroofed the roof (note paronomasia in the Greek and cognate accusative). The only instance of this verb in the N.T. A rare word in late Greek, no papyrus example given in Moulton and Milligan Vocabulary. They climbed up a stairway on the outside or ladder to the flat tile roof and dug out or broke up () the tiles (the roof). There were thus tiles ( , Lu 5:19) of laths and plaster and even slabs of stone stuck in for strength that had to be dug out. It is not clear where Jesus was ( ), either downstairs, (Holtzmann) or upstairs (Lightfoot), or in the quadrangle (atrium or compluvium, if the house had one). “A composition of mortar, tar, ashes and sand is spread upon the roofs, and rolled hard, and grass grows in the crevices. On the houses of the poor in the country the grass grows more freely, and goats may be seen on the roofs cropping it” (Vincent).
They let down the bed ( ), historical present again, aorist tense in Lu 5:19 (). The verb means to lower from a higher place as from a boat. Probably the four men had a rope fastened to each corner of the pallet or poor man’s bed (, Latin grabatus. So one of Mark’s Latin words). Matthew (Mt 9:2) has , general term for bed. Luke has (little bed or couch). Mark’s word is common in the papyri and is spelled also , sometimes , while W, Codex Washingtonius, has it .
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Come nigh unto him [] . The word does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament. But some read prosenegkai bring him unto him. So Rev., in margin.
They uncovered [] . The only use of the word in New Testament.
Broken it up [] . Lit., scooped it out. Very graphic and true to fact. A modern roof would be untiled or unshingled; but an oriental roof would have to be dug to make such an opening as was required. A composition of mortar, tar, ashes, and sand is spread upon the roofs, and rolled hard, and grass grows in the crevices. On the houses of the poor in the country the grass grows more freely, and goats may be seen on the roofs cropping it. In some cases, as in this, stone slabs are laid across the joists. See Luk 5:19, where it is said they let him down through the tiles; so that they would be obliged, not only to dig through the grass and earth, but also to pry up the tiles. Compare Psa 79:6.
The bed [] . One of Mark’s Latin words, grabatus, and condemned by the grammarians as inelegant. A rude pallet, merely a thickly padded quilt or mat, held at the corners, and requiring no cords to let it down. They could easily reach the roof by the steps on the outside, as the roof is low; or they could have gone into an adjoining house and passed along the roofs. Some suppose that the crowd was assembled in an upper chamber, which sometimes extended over the whole area of the house. It is not possible accurately to reproduce the details of the scene. Dr. Thomson says that Jesus probably stood in the lewan or reception – room, a hall which is entered from the court or street by an open arch; or he may have taken his stand in the covered court in front of the house itself, which usually has open arches on three sides, and the crowd was around and in front of him.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “And when they could not come nigh unto Him for the press,” (kai me dunamenoi prosenegkai auto dia ton ochlon) -And when they were unable to bring the man into the home or residence because of the crowd,” when they (the four) could not directly approach Him.
2) “They uncovered the roof where He was (apestegasan ten stegen hopou en) “They took away(tore off) the roof where He (Jesus) was standing,” in the house, or under the roof in some open space of the house.
3) “And when they had broken it up,” (kai eksorouksantes) “And having opened up the roof,” unroofed a portion of the house, by tearing away the plaster, tiles, and laths.
4) “They let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay,” (chalosi ton krabaton hopou ho paralutikos) “They lowered the mattress (soft bed) or portable couch the paralytic was lying,” into the home, in view of and near Jesus.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
(4) They uncovered the roof . . . when they had broken it up.The strong expressions of the injury done to the roof are peculiar to St. Mark. St. Luke gives, through the tiles.
They let down the bed.St. Mark uses a different word from St. Matthew, the Greek form of the Latin word grabatus, the pallet or camp-bed used by the poor. The same word appears in Joh. 5:8-10, and in Act. 5:15; Act. 9:33, but not at all in St. Matthew or St. Luke.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Mar 2:4. And when they could not come nigh, &c. The better to understand the particulars in this verse, it will be proper to consider the manner of building in the East, which we find largely described in Dr. Shaw’s excellent Travels, where he has given us a full explanation of the passage before us. “The general method of building,” says he, “seems to be continued from the earliest ages down to this time, without the least alteration or improvement. Large doors, spacious chambers, marble pavements, cloistered courts, with fountains sometimes playing in the midst, are conveniences well adapted to the circumstances of these hotter climates. The jealousy of these people is less apt to be alarmed, whilst, if we except a small latticed window or balcony, which sometimes looks into the streets, all the other windows open into their respective courts or quadrangles. It is during the celebration only of some zeenah (as theycall a public festival) that these latticed windows or balconies are left open. For this being a time of great liberty, revelling, and extravagance, each family is ambitious of adorning both the inside and outside of their houses with their richest furniture; while crowds of spectators, dressed out in their best apparel, and laying aside all modesty and restraint, go in and out where they please.The account we have 2Ki 9:30 of Jezebel’s painting her face and tiring her head, and looking out at a window, upon Jehu’s public entrance into Jezreel, gives us a lively idea of an Eastern lady at one of these zeenahs or festivals.”
“The streets of these cities, the better to shade them from the sun, are usually narrow, with sometimes a range of shops on each side. If from these we enter into one of the principal houses, we shall first pass through a porch or gateway, with benches on each side; few persons, not even the nearest relations, having further admission, except upon extraordinary occasions. Hence we are received into the court or quadrangle, which, lying open to the weather, is, according to the ability of the owner, paved with marble, or such materials as will carry off the water into the common sewers. When much people are to be admitted, as upon the celebration of a marriage, the circumcising of a child, or occasions of the like nature, the company is rarely or never received into one of the chambers. The court is the usual place of their reception, which is strewed accordingly with mats and carpets for their more commodious entertainment: and as this is called el woost, or the middle of the house, (literally answering to the of St. Luk 5:19.) it is probable that the place where our Saviour and the apostles were frequently accustomed to give their instructions, might have been in the likesituation, or in the area or quadrangle of one of these houses. In the summer season, and upon all occasions when a large company is to be received, this court is commonly sheltered from the inclemency of the weather by a velum, umbrella, or veil; which being expanded upon ropes from one side of the parapet wall to the other, may be folded or unfolded at pleasure. The Psalmist seems to allude either to the tents of the Bedoweens, or to some covering of this kind, in that beautiful expression of spreading out the heavens, like a veil or curtain
“The court is for the most part surrounded by a cloister, over which,when the house has one or more stories, (and they sometimes have two or three) there is a gallery erected, of the same dimensions with the cloister; having a ballustrade, or else a piece of carved or latticed work going round about it, to prevent people from falling into the court. From the cloisters and galleries we are conducted into large spacious chambers, one of them frequently serving a whole family; whence it is, that the cities of these countries, which are generally much inferior in bigness to those of Europe, yet are so exceeding populous, that great numbers of the inhabitants are swept away by the plague, or any other contagious distemper. These chambers in houses of better fashion, from the middle of the wall downwards, are covered and adorned with velvet, or damask hangings, of white, blue, red, green, or other colours, (Est 1:6.) suspended upon hooks, or taken down at pleasure; but the upper part is embellished with more permanent ornaments, being adorned with the most ingenious wreathings and devices in stucco or fret-work. The ceiling is generally of wainscot, either very artfully painted, or else thrown into a variety of pannels, with glided mouldings and scrolls of their Koran intermixed. The prophet (Jer 22:14.) exclaims against the Eastern houses that were ceiled with cedar, and painted with vermilion. The floors are laid with painted tiles or plaister of terrace; but as these people make little or no use of chairs, (either sitting cross-legged, or lying at length) they always cover or spread them over with carpets, which, for the most part, are of the richest materials. Along the sides of the wall or floor, a range of narrow beds or mattrasses is often placed upon these carpets; and for their further ease and convenience, several velvet or damask bolsters are placed upon these carpets or mattrasses, indulgences that seem to be alluded to by the stretching themselves upon couches, and by sewing of pillows to arm-holes, as we have expressed, Amo 6:4. Eze 13:18; Eze 13:20.”
“At one end of each chamber there is a little gallery, raised three, four, or five feet above the floor, with a ballustrade in the front of it, with a few steps likewise leading up to it. Here they place their beds; a situation frequently alluded to in the Holy Scriptures; which may likewise illustrate the circumstance of Hezekiah’s turning his face, when he prayed, towards the wall, (that is to say, from his attendants) 2Ki 20:2 that the fervency of his devotion might be the less taken notice of and observed. The like is related of Ahab, 1Ki 21:4 though probably not upon a religious account, but in order to conceal from his attendants the anguish he was in for his late disappointment. The stairs are sometimes placed in the porch, sometimes at the entrance into the court; but never upon the outside of the house. The top of the house, which is always flat, is covered with a stony plaister of terrace; whence, in foreign languages, it has attained the name of terrace. This is usually surrounded by two walls, the outermost whereof is partly built over the street, and partly makes the partition with the contiguous houses; being frequently so low, that one may easily climb over it. The other, which I shall call the parapet wall, hangs immediately over the court, being always breast high, and answers to the , or lorica, Deu 22:8 which we render the battlements. Instead of this parapet wall, some terraces are guarded, like the galleries, with ballustrades only, or latticed work; in which fashion probably, as the name seems to import, was the , or net, or lattice, as we render it, that Ahaziah, (2Ki 1:2.) might be carelessly leaning over, when he fell from thence into the court. For upon these terraces, several offices of the family are performed; such as the drying of linen or flax, (Jos 2:6.) and the preparing of figs and raisins; where likewise they enjoy the cool refreshing breezes of the evening, converse with one another, and offer up their devotions. In the feast of tabernacles, booths were erected upon them, Neh 8:16. As these terraces are thus frequently used, and trampled upon, not to mention the solidity of the materials wherewith they are made, they will not easily permit any vegetable substances to take root or thrive upon them; which, perhaps, may illustrate the comparison, Isa 37:27 of the Assyrians, and Psa 129:6 of the wicked, to the grass that grows upon the house-tops, which withereth before it is grown up.”
“When any of these cities are built upon level ground, one may pass along the tops of the houses from one end to the other. Such in general is the method and contrivance of these houses. If then it may be presumed, that our Saviour was preaching in one of these houses, one may, by attending to the structure of it, give no small light to one circumstance of that history, which has given great offence to some unbelievers,supposingunsurmountabledifficultieswouldattendsuchan action. Which mistake they might perhaps fall into by not attending to the original, which will bear this construction; When they could not come at Jesus for the press, they got upon the roof of the house, and drew back the veil where he was; or, they laid open and uncovered that part of it, especially, which was spread over the place, , where he was sitting, and having removed and plucked away (according to St. Jerome) whatever might incommode them in their intended good office, or having tied (according to the Persian version) the four corners of the bed or bedstead with cords, where the sick of the palsy lay, they let it down before Jesus.”
“For that there was not the least force or violence offered to the roof, and consequently that (breaking up) no less than , (they uncovered), will admit of some other interpretations than what have been given to them in our version, appears from the parallel place in St. Luke; where , per tegulas demiserunt ilium, (which we translate they let him through the tiling, as if that had actually been broken up already) should be rendered, they let him down over, along the side, or by the way of the roof. We have a passage in Aulus Gellius exactly of the same purport, where it is said, that ‘if any person in chains should make his escape into the house of the Flamen Dialis, he should be forthwith loosed: and that his fetters should be drawn up through the impluvium, upon the roof, or terrace, and from thence be let down into the highway, or the street.'”
“When the use of these phrases and the fashion of these houses are rightly considered, there will be no reason to suppose that any breach was actually made in the tegula, or : since all that was to be done in the case of the paralytic was to carry him up to the top of the house, (either by forcing their way through the crowd up the staircase, or else by conveying him over some of the neighbouring terraces) and there, after they had drawn away the or veil, to let him down, along the side of the roof through the opening (or impluvium), into the midst (of the court) before Jesus.” See Shaw’s Trav. 4to, p. 207. Bishop Pearce’s Vindication of the Miracles, part 4: p. 26 and the notes on Mat 9:1; Mat 9:38. Instead of for the press, we may read because of the throng.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Unusual Methods
Mar 2:4
The idea is that if you want to get at Christ you can do so. That is all. If you do not want to get at Christ you can easily escape by excuse. That is true. We all know it: we have been partakers of that shameful trick. If you do not want to go to church you can find pleas enough for not going lions in the way by the thousand: if you want to go the lions may be ten thousand in number, but you will be there. So we come back upon a homely but expressive proverb which says, “Where there’s a will there’s a way.” We can do very much what we want to do. This is true in all things. See if the fault be not in the will. What a weak point is here; what a very fickle constitution is there; what an irrational sensitiveness puts in its plea at another point. How selfishness plays a subtle but decisive part in the tragedy or comedy of life! Whoever knew an earnest man permanently baffled? But how difficult to be earnest about religion! It is invisible, impalpable, imponderable; it is so largely distant, so truly spiritual; it cannot be weighed, measured, looked at; it does not come within the range of observation to any extent which appeals to a competitive selfishness. So men fail, and blame the devil; so men do not go to Christ, and say they were fated to keep away; thus men tell lies until they shut out the light of noonday by their shadow. The men in question could not get easily at Christ: but what is worth having that can be easily got at? When they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they tore off the roof, they broke it up. They meant to succeed, we do not; they did succeed, we fail; they ought to succeed, we ought to be defeated. Shame upon the economy of the universe if the coward ever won a battle, if the lazy man ever came back with a sheaf of corn! Do we really want to get at Christ? Our answer will contain everything that explains our success or our defeat. Is it the heart that wants to see the Saviour? or is it some adventure of the imagination that wants to catch his profile and then vanish, because it is a profile that ought to be seen? Is it the soul that says, “I will”? If so, the battle is half won; Christ himself comes into vision when he hears that poignant cry.
For what purpose do we want to see Christ? Everything will depend upon our reply to that inquiry. Christ himself will not come to some calls. Herod expected to see some great thing done by him, and Christ went into a cold stone, looked at Herod as a corpse might have looked at him, answered him not not by look, or touch, or word, or sign until Herod was afraid. There is a silence more awe-inspiring than speech can ever be. For what purpose, therefore, do we want to see Christ? Is it upon real business? He answers nothing to curiosity; he cannot stop to chaffer with speculation; he will stay all night with an earnest Nicodemus; he will keep the sun from going down or rising up if the soul really wants him to settle questions of guilt and pardon. Are we prepared to take the roof away rather than not see Christ? In other words, are we prepared to take unusual methods, peculiar and eccentric ways, rather than be baffled in our quest after the Son of God? If these men had taken off the roof without first going to the door, Jesus Christ would have rebuked them. We must not be eccentric merely for the sake of eccentricity. There is a defiance of conventional propriety which is itself nothing but a base vulgarity that ought to be frowned down. But the men went to the door, they tried the regular way, and when they could not enter by the door, because the throng was so great, then they must make a door. Everything depends upon our treatment of circumstances. We must not defy conventional propriety merely for the sake of defying it; but when conventional propriety is closing up the door so that we cannot get in, we must find admission by the roof. Conventional propriety is killing the Church. Infidelity is doing the Church no harm at all. It does not lie within the power of a blatant scoffer to touch the Cross of Christ; but its protectors may not be faithful to their responsibility; the professors of Christ have it in their power to crucify him every day, and put him to an open shame.
Let us try to get at Christ, and first try to get in by the door. There are several doors, let us try the first. How crowded it is; how long-bearded the men are who are filling up the opening; and there is intelligence in their eyes, there is earnestness in every wrinkle of their venerable faces; these are men who have sat up all night over many a weary problem; they are not foolish men, they are men of culture, reading, thought, study; they are inquisitive men, they do not read the books of yesterday, they read the records that are a thousand years old. But we cannot pass them, because we have not learned their letters. These are the rabbis of the Church, and unless we can take their language and swing with them over ten centuries, we cannot be allowed to pass that way. Then let us try some other door. Here are other men not wholly dissimilar; they, too, have marks of study upon their faces; these eyes have been tried by many a midnight lamp; but they talk long words, and hard words; we never heard our mother use such language; every word is a word of many syllables that requires a kind of verbal surgeon to take it to pieces. Hear how they talk; though the words be very long, yet they speak them glibly, with a fluency that itself is a mockery, because we feel that we could not even stumble our way across such stony paths. Who are they? They are the philosophers. We cannot get in there; let us try another door. Here are men looking one another in the face, and reasoning in high argument, and proving and then disproving, reaching conclusions only to shatter them; we shall make nothing out at that door. Who are these men, who have weights and scales and measures, and who will not admit anything that does not prove certainties? They are the logicians, the controversialists, the men of open throat, and eye of fire, and tongue like a stormy wind; they will argue. What does it all come to? To blocking the way, to shutting up the door. You and I, poor broken hearts, cannot find access there. Shall we go home?
We came to see Christ, and we mean to remain until we do see him. Then let us try another door. Who are these men robed and certified, and who bear the image and aspect of officers? They are skilled hands here. Evidently they keep no end of keys; mayhap they may have the key we want. They are burning incense, opening doors, ringing bells, performing ceremonies, almost dancing in their strange gesticulations. Who are they? Ceremonialists. You never caught one of them ten minutes late in the morning. They live by ceremony; they like it, it suits them wholly. Who are they? They are ecclesiastics; men who have tailors to themselves. “Clerical tailors” is a word you now see in brass letters on certain audacious windows. We cannot get in there. Shall we go home? No. We came out to find the Son of God, and we will find him. Saviour, Son of David, have mercy upon us! What shall we do? We must resort to unusual ways. They will not allow us to go to church, then let us meet on the seashore; they will not admit us without certain cards and certificates and endorsements: ruin be to all their mechanism! Let us, brother, fall down here on bare knees at an altar consecrated by the incarnation of the Son of God; mayhap he will see us without the piece of official paper; he may hear heart-prayer when we cannot have access to written form, couched in noble language, if anything too dignified for heaven.
Do you want to see Christ? There are men who say they would go in but they cannot find their way through the rabbis, or through the philosophers, or through the logicians, or through the ecclesiastics, and there they are. Shame on them! they are not earnest; they would not allow a friend to escape in that way. They do not want Christ. Nicodemus found a way. It was a long weary day that. He looked often at the clouds and at the sun, to see if he could steal forth. He was determined not to rest until he had spoken to this wondrous man. He waited for the night, and the night like a veiled friend came and took him to the Saviour, and they sat up all night; and that night the heaven trembled with stars, there was hardly room in all the firmament for the stars that wanted to glitter out their infinite secret upon the heart of this inquiring master in Israel; never did a night so starry bend over the earth. To have been there! Zacchus found a way. He said, I am short, I cannot reach over the shoulders of these men, but I will climb up yonder sycamore tree. He never would have been chief among the publicans, and rich, if he had been afraid of climbing a tree; that explains the man’s success in life. To have seen him otherwise you would have just seen a dapper little gentleman that never seemed to have touched anything with his fine fingers; but when he wanted to carry an object, then see how the dapper little gentleman changed into a fiery little furnace that meant to win, and up the tree he went, for Christ was to pass that way. Some men would never have seen the tree; some men certainly would not have climbed the sycamore; others would have said, “Perhaps on another occasion we may see him.” But to earnestness there is no “other occasion”; there is only one day, and that is to-day. There be indolent, leisurely, contemplative souls who play with time; they speak of “tomorrow” as if it were theirs; they speak of “another occasion” as if they had compromised with death, and staved the monster off for a settled series of years. Zacchus has only one time, one opportunity; he lives in a burning now. There was a woman who found a way. They need not have called her a woman; she could not have concealed that fact; they might have told us the incident, and we should have fixed the sex. She said, If I might but touch the hem of his garment; if these poor fingers could but touch the craspedon, I shall be healed. She did it quietly, silently, but Jesus knew that she did it, for he said, “Who hath touched me?” and the vulgar disciples said, “Touched thee! Why, see how they throng thee, and sayest thou who touched thee? Why, we are all touching thee.” “No,” said Christ, “no; some finger has taken life out of me; whose finger was it? I am conscious that virtue has gone out of me.” There is a rude touch that gets nothing; there is a sensitive touch that extracts lightning from God, virtue from the Cross. There is a hearing that gets nothing, because the hearer simply hears the noise, the succession of syllables, words, paragraphs; there is another hearing that catches a sound within the sound, music within the articulation; there is a hearing that only wants one word, it can supply all the rest; give it that one word, and see how it runs to tell its exultant joy. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear; he that hath fingers to touch, let him touch; he that hath eyes to see the invisible, let him look, and all heaven shall be full of angels. Do we want to see Christ? That is the urgent, recurrent, tremendous question.
There is a permissive violence “They uncovered the roof… and when they had broken it up——” There are respectable persons who lock up their churches six days out of seven, lest by some accident some poor blunderer should scratch the paint. They say they are careful of the church. So they are, much too careful. But the church was made for man, not man for the church; the roof was made for man, not man for the roof. Were they going to let fifteen feet of canvas stand between them and the living Healer of the universe? Were they going to balance a dying man against a root that a hand could tear off? They must be at Christ. There is an acceptable violence. When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” That is his constant reply to earnestness. It is not stated that he had any conversation with the man. Some of us are blessed on the road to church; it cost us a great deal to get to church that day, and Jesus joined us on the road and gave us Sabbath before we got inside, so that when we came within the gates of the sanctuary the whole place glowed like a chamber let down from heaven. Jesus knows what it cost some people to get at him; he knows that they have to give up old acquaintances, bad ways of business, habits that had laid themselves with iron grip upon the heart, and before they have time to speak, he says, I know it all; thou shalt have the fatted calf, a ring for thy hand, and shoes for thy feet, and this shall be thy father’s house; as for thy sins, they are in the sea, they have gathered themselves together and plunged into the deep. Son, stand up! There is a church-going that amounts to battle and victory in one supreme act. Unusual ways are permitted under certain circumstances; when there is real need they are permitted; where there is no alternative they are allowed.
This is where the Church has got wrong. It has its little methods, and its small plans, and its neat ways of doing things, and the devil never was afraid of neatness. That is an awful blemish anywhere. A “neat” sermon! Could you degrade that loftiest, noblest, grandest speech more than by calling it a neat sermon? We must get rid of a good many people in order to get at reality in all this matter of adaptation to the necessities of the case. We must part with all the cold hearts; they have occupied so much space in the church in what are called for some inscrutable reason “pews,” and therefore we shall miss them, because they did weigh and measure so much arithmetically; but they are better gone! Personally I would turn every church to its most multifarious uses, if I could do good in that way which is impossible in any other way. Unusual ways have always been permitted. Once there was a man who was very hungry, and there was nothing to eat but the shewbread, the holy bread, and he took it ravenously and devoured it, and God said, “That is right.” Hunger has a right to bread. No man should be punished for taking bread when after honest endeavour and strenuous service he has failed to get it otherwise. He is no thief who, being honest in his soul, has failed to get bread and is dying of hunger, and that openly says, “This is for man, and I solemnly, religiously take it.” God never condemned such an action. I know how dangerous it is even to hint at this, because there be some mischievous minds that do not turn water into wine, but wine into water, and water into poison; there is a process of deterioration; if any such man should pervert my words so the blame be his, not mine. Once it was impossible to eat the passover in the regular way; circumstances so combined that a good deal of the prescribed mechanism had to be done away with; and we read in the historical books that they ate the passover, “otherwise than as it was written.” Everything goes down under the agony of human need. Once there was a number of persons who assailed the Son of God because he healed a man on the Sabbath day; and he said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” If we do not find Christ, blame ourselves. Never does Christ blame himself because the people have not found him. That is a remarkable circumstance; consider it well; in no instance does Jesus Christ say, “These people might have been saved if I had shown myself to them. But I kept out of the way purposely, therefore they are not saved.” He declares the contrary to be the fact; he says; “I would, but ye would not; ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.” “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” He never says, “He would not.” He lived to die; he died to live; he ascended to intercede.
It is never easy to get at Christ; it ought not to be easy to get at him. It means battle, pressure, determination. “Strait is the gate, narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” The road is over a place called Calvary, and a voice says to those who attempt that way, “Except a man deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me, he cannot be my disciple.” To one man Jesus said, “Sell all that thou hast, and come”; to another he said, “Except a man hate his father and his mother [in comparison] he cannot be my disciple “; another who thought he was going on to riches and honour said he would go, and Jesus said, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” But the battle has a great victory. Small efforts end in small consequences. Again, therefore, the question recurs, Do we want to see Christ? Is it our heart that wants him, or our curiosity? Are we only asking the question of imagination, or are we propounding the inquiry of agony? To-day I set open the door of the kingdom of heaven in the name of Jesus. To weary men I would represent him saying, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst” Lord, we all thirst; our hearts thirst, our souls have drunk rivers of water and still they thirst “if any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.” May we all go? “He, every one that thirsteth, come!” Who says so? The Spirit, the bride, and the Giver of the water, the First, and the Last. It is an awful thing to have heard this discourse. It puts us into a new relation. Cursed be the tempter that led me into this church! some soul may say, for without being here I should have bewildered myself and perplexed myself and excused myself; but this man has torn the roof off the house of my excuses, and laid my bad man’s pleas open to the sun of heaven. Others may say, Blessed be God for this word, for we have heard to-day that if any man really desires to see the Son of God, him the Son of God will see.
Prayer
Almighty God, teach us that all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole world; there is nothing hidden from the sight thereof. Help each of us to say, Thou God seest me. In this fear and in this hope may we live every day. We thank thee for the Son of God, who reads our hearts, who knows our inward and unspoken reasoning, and who will judge us accordingly. Behold, we stand before him to be judged; but do we not first stand before his Cross to be saved? May we not there plead with God, each saying for himself, God be merciful unto me a sinner? Then we shall not fear the judgment-seat, for there shall we meet our Saviour, and he will know the power and grace of his own priesthood. We would therefore live in Jesus: we would be crucified with Christ, that we may rise with the Son of God: we would know the fellowship of his sufferings, that we might afterwards know the power of his resurrection. Help us to be true in soul, pure in heart; then shall our lives be open, fearless, useful. Holy Spirit, hear us when we humbly say, Dwell with us: continue thy ministry of light and purification in our mind and heart until the sacred process is complete. For all we know of light, for all we care for things divine and eternal, we bless and magnify the grace of God. Once we were blind, now we see; we have returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls: may we go out no more for ever. May we abide in the tabernacle of the Most High, and be sheltered evermore under the wings of the Almighty; may our spirits grow in holy anger against all things wrong and mean, false and selfish. Because thou knowest us altogether we will come to thee with fearless childlike trust. Lord, undertake for us; show us the right way; may we give no heed to our own vain imaginings, but look into the law and to the testimony of wisdom and progress, and abide in the same, diligently obeying the will of our Father in heaven. Pity us wherein we have been wrong, and done wrong in instances countless, each aggravating the other. The Lord shows us that where sin abounds grace doth much more abound; that the Cross of Christ erects itself in welcoming love above all the tumult and uproar of human sin. Keep us until the end, until the day of doom; then, life’s little journey done, may we stand, through the power of the everlasting Cross, among those who are arrayed in white garments, never more to be spotted by the world. Amen.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
4 And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay.
Ver. 4. They uncovered the roof ] Which in those countries was flat, so that they might walk upon it, Deu 22:8 , preach upon it, Mat 10:27 , &c.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Mar 2:4 . The particulars in this verse not in Mt., who did not care how they found their way to Jesus; enough for him that they succeeded somehow . (T. R.): here only in N. T. to approach; (W.H [8] ), to bring near (the sick man understood) to Him, Jesus. . ., removed the roof, to which they would get access by an outside stair either from the street or from the court. , where He was; where was that? in an upper room (Lightfoot and Vitringa), or in a room in a one-storied house (Holtz., H. C.), or not in a room at all, but in the atrium or compluvium , the quadrangle of the house (Faber, Archol. , Jahn, Archol. ). In the last-mentioned case they would have to remove the parapet (battlement, Deu 22:8 ) and let the man down into the open space. : not something additional to but explanatory of = they unroofed by digging through the material tiles, laths, and plaster. : a small portable couch, for the poor, for travellers, and for sick people; condemned by Phryn., p. 62; the correct word. Latin grabatus , which may have led Mk. to use the term in the text.
[8] Westcott and Hort.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
could not = were not able to.
not. Greek. me. App-105.
come nigh unto. Greek. proseggizo, Occurs only here in N.T.
for the press. The 1611 edition of the Authorized Version reads “for press”.
for = on account of. Greek. dia. App-104. Mar 2:2.
press = crowd,
uncovered. Easily done in an Eastern house. Occurs only here in NT. [Gal 1:4, Gal 1:15. ]
broken it up. Greek. ewrussb. Occurs only here and
bed = couch, or pallet. Greek. krabbaton, a Latin word. A poor man’s bed. Not the same word as in Mar 4:2.
wherein = on which. Greek. epi. App-104.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Mar 2:4. ) they took off the roof) out of love, without doing injury. [So faith penetrates through all obstacles (Mar 2:5) to reach Christ.-V. g.] It is probable that it was a cottage [tugurium, hut], not a large house.-, digging out) the ceiling, beneath the tiles of the roof, so as to make a large aperture. The people crowding in numbers, had caused great delay in reaching Christ.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
they uncovered: Deu 22:8, Luk 5:19
Reciprocal: Mat 9:2 – seeing Act 5:16 – bringing
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
4
The press means the crowd that had gathered about the door. Matthew records this event but says nothing about their going down through the roof. In Luk 5:19 they are said to have made an opening through the roof by taking up the tiling. Houses were made with flat roofs which Were covered over with roofing tile. These could be taken up without any damage to the building just as many styles of roof tiles can be handled today. After making this opening through the roof, they let the couch bearing the sick man down right into the immediate presence of Jesus.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay.
[They uncovered the roof, etc.] here I recollect that phrase the way of the roof; “When Rabh Houna was dead, his bier could not be carried out through the door,” the door being too strait; “therefore they thought good to draw it out and let it down through the roof; or through the way of the roof. But Rabh Chasda said to them, ‘Behold, we have learned from him that it redounds to the honour of a wise man to be carried out by the door.'”
“It is written, ‘And they shall eat within thy gates’ (Deu 26:12); that is, when the entrance into the house is by the gate, to except the way through the roof.” “Does he enter into the house, using the way through the gate, or using the way through the roof?” The place treats of a house, in the lower part of which the owner dwells; but the upper part; is let out to another. It is asked, what way he must enter who dwells in an upper room, whether by the door and the lower parts, where the owner dwells; or whether he must climb up to the roof by the way to the roof; that is, as the Gloss hath it, “That he ascend without the house by a ladder set against it for entrance into the upper room; and so go into the upper room.”
By ladders set up, or perhaps fastened there before, they first draw up the paralytic upon the roof; Luk 5:19. Then seeing there was a door in every roof through which they went up from the lower parts of the house into the roof, and this being too narrow to let down the bed and the sick man in it, they widen that space by pulling off the tiles that lay about it.
Well, having made a hole through the roof, the paralytic is let down into the upper chamber. There Christ sits, and the Pharisees and the doctors of the law with him, and not in the lower parts of the house. For it was customary for them, when they discoursed of the law or religion, to go up into the upper chamber.
“These are the traditions which they taught in the upper chamber of Hananiah, Ben Hezekiah, Ben Garon.” “The elders went up into an upper chamber in Jericho. They went up also into an upper chamber in Jabneh.” “Rabh Jochanan and his disciples went up to an upper chamber; and read and expounded.” Compare Mar 14:15; Act 1:13; Act 20:8.
Fuente: Lightfoot Commentary Gospels
Mar 2:4. Could not come nigh unto him. The doorway was full (Mar 2:2).
They uncovered (unroofed) the roof where he was. Luke says what is here implied: they went upon the housetop, probably by an outside staircase. That they merely removed the awning from the court is not in accordance with what is added: and when they had broken it up, or dug it out. Besides Luke explicitly says that the man was let down through the tiling (tiles). The supposition that the parapet alone was broken through is open to the same objection. It is most probable that our Lord was in the upper room, usually the largest in an Eastern house; that the crowd was in the court, as Mar 2:2 implies, and that these men actually removed the tiles on the roof and broke through the plaster or clay of the roof itself. This was an evidence of their earnestness.
The bed. A different word from those used by Matthew and Luke. It denotes a mattress, sometimes merely a sheepskin, used for the service of the sick, or as a camp-bed. Of course bedsteads were and are unknown in the East.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Verse 4
Uncovered the roof; removed such a portion as to allow of letting the patient down into the court.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
2:4 And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken [it] up, they {c} let down the {d} bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay.
(c) They broke up the upper part of the house which was made simply, and let down the man that was sick from paralysis into the lower part where Christ preached, for they could not come before Christ in any other way.
(d) The word signifies the poorest kind of bed, upon which men used to lay down at noon, and at such other times to refresh themselves; we call it a couch.