The second-story room of a Hebrew or a Greek house. These rooms were often like a tower built on the flat roof of a Hebrew home. The location allowed for privacy, for comfort during the hot season, or for the entertainment of guests.
Some upper rooms could accommodate large gatherings of people. In at least one example, 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 (verses 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 Kings 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 Kings 17:19–23). David went to an upper room for privacy to mourn the death of Absalom (2 Samuel 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 Kings 23:12).
Jesus ate the Passover supper in an upper room with his disciples (Mark 14:15; Luke 22:12). Following Jesus's ascension, the disciples went to the upper room where they all stayed before. This reference again shows the potentially large size of some upper rooms. 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).