A MAT, a straw pallet — the bedding of somebody who owns one blanket. It is a Latin loanword (grabatus) wearing Greek endings, it is low-register, and Mark uses it without embarrassment (2:4, 2:9, 2:11, 2:12, and again at 6:55). ⚠ The interesting fact is what the other two do with it: at the same scene Matthew (9:2) and Luke (5:18) both replace it with klinē, an ordinary bed, and Luke also swaps Mark's dug-through mud roof for TILES (5:19). That pair of changes is the clearest small window in the Gospels onto Mark's Greek — the roughest in the New Testament, and roughest precisely where the others smooth. This translation reads 'mat' and does not upgrade it. → first discussed at Mark 2:4