Exegesis:
kai mē heurontes… ‘and when they did not find…,’ anabantes… ‘after they had gone up…,’ kathēkan… ‘they let down….’ Semantically anabantes and kathēkan belong together closely and are dependent upon their not finding a way to bring the paralysed man in. This is usually brought out by a rendering as found in Revised Standard Version. For a similar construction cf. on v. 12.
kai mē heurontes poias (scil. hodou) eisenegkōsin auton ‘and when they did not find along which (way) they could bring him in,’ hence ‘when they did not find a way to bring him in’ (cf. Revised Standard Version). poias scil. hodou is genitive of place.
dia ton ochlon ‘because of the crowd,’ goes with mē heurontes.
epi to dōma ‘on the roof,’ presumably a flat roof. Usually a flat roof was covered with clay and Luke’s reference to tiles (dia tōn keramōn) may be due to the fact that tiles were customary on pitch and flat roofs in the Greek world.
dia tōn keramōn kathēkan auton sun tō klinidiō ‘they let him down with the bed through the tiles,’ implying that they removed the tiles and let him down through the open space thus provided.
keramos ‘roof tile,’ of clay presumably.
kathiēmi ‘to let down.’
klinidion (also v. 24) diminutive of klinē (v. 18) but here synonymous with it.
eis to meson ‘into the middle,’ i.e. of the people gathered in the house.
emprosthen tou Iēsou ‘in front of Jesus.’
emprosthen ‘before,’ here synonymous with enōpion (v. 18).
Translation:
Because of the crowd may better be given initial position, e.g. ‘Now the people present there were many. Therefore those men could not find a way (or, were not able) to bring him in but went up….’ — Crowd, or ‘mass,’ ‘gathering of people,’ ‘many people’ (cf. 6.17; 7.11f; 8.4; 9.37f; 22.47). With the definite article (here and in 6.19; 7.24 (plur.); 8.19, 40; 9.11 (plur.), 12, 16; 11.27, 29 (plur.); 19.3), it refers to the masses that gathered to see and hear Jesus, but did not belong to the circle of his disciples and followers. The force of the article may have to be expressed by a deictic locative element, e.g. ‘great number of people there,’ or a qualifying phrase, e.g. ‘many people (that were) around/near him,’ or by a term like ‘the/his audience.’
The roof, i.e. a flat, or nearly flat, roof on which two or more people can stand. Where the normal term for ‘roof’ suggests a pitch roof, the expression will have to be adjusted, cf. e.g. ‘the top of the house’ (one Shona version, Zarma, Balinese), ‘the flat house top’ (Tzeltal), and cf. ‘they climbed up on the house’ (Marathi); or with a slight semantic shift, ‘the loft of the house’ (Bahasa Indonesia KB).
They … let him down … through the tiles. The verb may have to be specified, e.g. ‘to hand-down’ (Bahasa Indonesia), or, ‘to lower-on-ropes’ (Balinese). The prepositional phrase indicates that they made an improvised opening; hence such renderings as, ‘having removed the tiles they let…’ (Santali), or, where other material is used as a roofing, ‘they parted the roof (of split bamboo, lit. ‘roof which is split open’)’ (Tboli); or again, without reference to the material, ‘where the house top was opened by them’ (Tzeltal). — Tiles has been described as ‘flat stones’ (Shona 1966), or more generically, ‘covering’ (Sinhala), ‘roofing’ (Ekari).
Him … with his bed, or, ‘the sick man … bed-and-all’ (Javanese), ‘him … on his bed’ (Batak Toba), since the paralytic and the bed were not let down separately.
Into the midst is often better specified, e.g. “into the middle of the group” (Good News Translation, similarly Bible de Jérusalem, Sundanese).
Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.