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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJohn Kitto Evening Bible Devotions: August 31
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Mat_9:2-8; Mar_2:4-12; Luk_5:20-26
Many, founding their notions of the sacred text upon the houses they see around them, conceive that, Jesus being in an upper room, the men removed the slates or tiles which covered it, together with the laths below. and by this opening let their friend down into the room. There are several objections to this; but this unanswerable one will suffice—that in the East roofs are not so constructed. Still there is a vague impression, that “somehow” a hole was made in the roof, through which the paralytic was passed down into the room in which our Lord was.
But the construction of the roofs in those parts, which we know from Josephus to have been the same in our Lord’s time as at present, renders this impossible; or if not absolutely impossible, at least the last thing that any one could think of.
The roofs are made of successive layers of beams, mats, branches, and leaves of trees, mold, and trodden clay. Now, to make a hole through this mass, would not only have been a difficult and laborious operation, consuming much time, but would most assuredly have overwhelmed the people sitting in the room below with heaps of rubbish, and choked them with clouds of dust. There is another kind of roof formed of small brick domes, the intervals between which are filled up with earth, etc., so as to give a level surface to the house-top. To open one of these would have been an operation of still greater labor and difficulty, and certainly not less dangerous to those below. Besides, we urge that our Lord was not in a room—for there He could not be heard by the crowd, which manifestly thronged the court even to the outer doors.
Some who feel this objection as to the room, and as to the roof, place our Savior in the court itself, and suppose that it was covered with an awning to screen it from the sun; and then go on to tell us, that the men being on the roof, lifted up the portion of the awning over the place where our Lord stood, and let the paralytic down to Him. But this explanation is founded on the usages of a country, such as Barbary, where the galleries are not usually seen to shade the inner sides of the courts of the houses, and where, consequently, an awning is employed for that purpose. But such awnings are even there used only in the heat of summer; and it can be shown that the time of this transaction was in early spring, not long before the passover—when no awnings are used, even in those quarters, and in those houses, where it is the custom to spread them out for shade in summer.
We return, therefore, to our house, with galleries; and if there were such, it is evident that our Lord would not have stood in the court itself, when He could have addressed the people with so much more advantage to them and to himself from the gallery above.
Being then in the gallery, the course the men had to take was plain and simple. They had only to take up two or three of the loosely attached boards forming the covering of the gallery, and there was a clear and sufficient opening through which to let their friend down to the feet of our Savior. This we believe is what they did; and it seems to us to furnish a sufficient and satisfactory explanation of a transaction which has seemed to many so difficult, and which some have been hardy enough to pronounce incredible.
Jesus was struck by the faith in his power to heal, which these persons had evinced by the contrivances to which they had resorted, and by the pains which they had taken, to procure for their helpless friend access to Him. He was willing to reward that faith by a greater cure than had been asked. He saw that the man labored under a distressing consciousness of sin, by which it is very possible that his bodily disease had been much aggravated. We certainly know that all men are sinners, and therefore see nothing remarkable in this man being thus distressed, or that he should stand in the need of pardon for his sins. But looking at the matter from the Jewish point of view, which this is not, we must recollect, that the Jews considered diseases, especially privative diseases, as undoubtedly intended in punishment for sins committed by the sufferer. This view is often alluded to in Scripture; and we indeed meet with it as early as the time of Job. Apart from this, a Jew of our Lord’s time, who paid due attention to all the observances which the law required, or which the rabbis imposed, was but little apt to regard himself as a sinner. But under this view, a man in a diseased condition must often have serious and searching thoughts of the sins which he supposed had brought him to that condition which he regarded as a testimony of the Lord’s anger against him. If he grew well in due course by the use of ordinary means, he might suppose the Lord’s anger had passed away; but in the present case, the man may have feared that, by resorting to an extraordinary means of cure, he might lack that comforting persuasion; and if his feelings in regard to sin were as sensitive as we have supposed, he may for a moment have doubted whether he ought not to endure his disease, till a natural cure, though at a distant day, should bring to him the blessed conviction that his sins were forgiven, rather than resort to means of instant cure, with which, so far as he knew, no such satisfying assurance could be connected.
It remained for Jesus to show him, that, seeing he was truly penitent, the assurance of forgiveness need not be dissociated from the means by which he now sought relief; and that it was in His power to give him both—the pardon and the healing.
He therefore said to him, “Man, thy sins be forgiven thee.
This was more startling than anything He had ever yet said to those who were unable to see the Divinity in Him. The, scribes who were present received it grievously. They muttered one to another that this was surely blasphemy, for who could forgive sins but God? The reasoning was in itself just in its principles, but false in its results. None could forgive sins but God; and for a man to pretend to exercise this Divine prerogative, were blasphemy. But all that Jesus had said and done showed him to hold a Divine commission. One who held such a commission could not blaspheme; and when, therefore, He claimed the right to exercise a Divine prerogative, He claimed to be more than man—He claimed to be God. And in Him that claim was not blasphemy, though it would have been denounced vehemently as such if it had been perceived. Jesus, perceiving their thoughts, which were open to Him as a book; told them that it was indeed easy to say, “Thy sins are forgiven,” for there could be no immediate or manifest sign to show that they had been attended with any result; but He would now show by words, followed by a manifestly miraculous sign, that He claimed no powers which He could not establish, or which did not properly belong to Him. So He said to the sufferer before him—“Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house!” and no sooner were these words spoken, than the helpless man sprang to his feet, lifted upon his head the mattress on which he had lain, and strode with vigorous limbs out of the court, through the astonished and admiring crowd, which now instinctively made way for him.
As to the learned doctors and scribes, their wonder at this most signal miracle overpowered for the time their indignation at the antecedent declaration from our Savior; but we may believe that the whole transaction tended to deepen the jealousy with which the Prophet of Nazareth began to be regarded by the class to which they belonged.