Biblion Bible Commentary
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Zacchaeus
Luke 19:1-10
1 He entered and was passing through Jericho. · WEB
A short, rich, thoroughly disliked man climbs a tree, and is invited to host the guest he came to look at.
There was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector, and he was rich Luke 19:2.
The story is this Gospel's alone and it is placed immediately after a rich ruler walked away sad Luke 18:23. Two rich men in two paragraphs, and the second is much worse — a chief tax collector, which means he held the franchise and other collectors worked under him. His wealth came out of his neighbors, through Rome.
He was trying to see who Jesus was, and couldn't because of the crowd, because he was short Luke 19:3.
The detail is comic and precise, and there is more in it than height. A crowd does not make way for a man like this. He is standing behind people who are not going to move.
He ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree Luke 19:4. A wealthy official of middle age running down a street and getting into a tree has surrendered his dignity entirely, and he does it for a look at a passing stranger.
"Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house" Luke 19:5.
He is called by name. Nothing has told us how his name was known, and the account does not explain. And the sentence carries this book's two great words: today, which it uses at the birth and on the cross Luke 2:11 Luke 23:43, and must, the word for what has to happen.
It is also not a request. He invites himself, which spares Zacchaeus the risk of asking and being refused in public.
They all murmured, saying, "He has gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner" Luke 19:7. All of them. The same verb as in chapter fifteen, and the same complaint that produced three parables about lost things Luke 15:2.
Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. If I have wrongfully exacted anything of anyone, I restore four times as much" Luke 19:8.
Nothing has been demanded of him. No sermon is recorded, no instruction, no call to repent — a meal was proposed and he stands up in his own house and does this.
The arithmetic is worth doing. Half to the poor, and fourfold restitution out of what remains: the law required a fifth added for fraud Leviticus 6:5, and fourfold was the penalty for stolen livestock Exodus 22:1. He assigns himself the heaviest rate in the book. A man who did this seriously would not stay rich.
And it is not the same as the instruction the ruler refused. He is not told to sell everything, and he is not commended for matching a standard. What he does is his own.
"Today, salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham" Luke 19:9. The murmuring crowd had written him out of the family; the verdict writes him back in.
"For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost" Luke 19:10. The sentence is the book's own summary of itself, and it is spoken over a tax collector's dinner table — the shepherd of chapter fifteen, out looking, and the account of who was up the tree and who was really doing the seeking.
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