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Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary

UPPER ROOM

Second-story room of a Hebrew or a Greek house; often like a tower, built on the flat roof of a Hebrew home for privacy, for comfort during the hot season, or for the entertainment of guests. In some instances it could accommodate large gatherings of people. In at least one instance, the room was on the third story (Acts 20:8). Eutychus, sitting in the window, went to sleep and fell three stories to the street below (vv 9-10). It may have been a similar type of accident that caused Ahaziah’s fatal injury when he fell through the latticework of his upper room (2 Kgs 1:2).

Elijah took the dead son of the widow of Zarephath to an upper room where he had been staying and raised him from the dead (1 Kgs 17:19-23). David went to an upper room for privacy to mourn the death of Absalom (2 Sm 18:33). The kings of Judah built strange altars near the upper room of Ahaz, which Josiah pulled down as part of his reform program (2 Kgs 23:12).

Jesus ate the Passover supper in an upper room with his disciples (Mk 14:15; Lk 22:12). The size of some of these rooms is evident from the fact that, after Jesus had left and ascended to heaven, the disciples went to the upper room where they all had been staying before. The congregation attending the meeting in Troas was not a small one either (Acts 20:8). Dorcas was laid in an upper room after she had died; later, Peter was taken up to the same room to pray for her restoration to life (Acts 9:36-41).