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The Man in the Sycamore Tree · Behind the Bible Verse: The Stories and History Behind Scripture

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Luke tells two stories from the town of Jericho, one straight after the other.
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In the first, a blind man by the road shouts until he's heard.
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In the second, a rich man the crowd calls a sinner climbs a tree, just to get a
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look.
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Behind the Bible Verse. This is made with the assistance of AI.
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Our reading is from the Gospel of Luke, chapter eighteen, verse thirty-five, to
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chapter nineteen, verse ten, in the World English Bible, British Edition.
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As he came near Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the road, begging.
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Hearing a multitude going by, he asked what this meant.
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They told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by.
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He cried out, “Jesus, you son of David, have mercy on me!”
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Those who led the way rebuked him, that he should be quiet; but he cried out all the
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more, “You son of David, have mercy on me!”
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Standing still, Jesus commanded him to be brought to him.
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When he had come near, he asked him, “What do you want me to do?”
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He said, “Lord, that I may see again.”
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Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight. Your faith has healed you.”
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Immediately he received his sight and followed him, glorifying God.
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All the people, when they saw it, praised God.
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He entered and was passing through Jericho. There was a man named Zacchaeus.
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He was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was,
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and couldn’t because of the crowd, because he was short.
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He ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was going
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to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him, and said
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to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.”
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He hurried, came down, and received him joyfully. When they saw it, they all
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murmured, saying, “He has gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner.”
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Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to
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the poor. If I have wrongfully exacted anything of anyone, I restore four times
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as much.”
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Jesus said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this house, because he also is a
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son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.”
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So that's Jericho, in two scenes. Let's start with where Jesus is going, because
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Luke makes a point of it, and then take each of these two men in turn.
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In Luke's Gospel, these scenes come near the end of a long road.
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Just before our reading, Jesus takes the twelve aside and tells them plainly that
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they are going up to Jerusalem, and that there he'll be handed over, mocked, and
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killed, and will rise on the third day. Luke adds that they understood none of it.
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Straight after our reading, Jesus tells a parable, and Luke says why: he was near
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Jerusalem, and people supposed God's Kingdom was about to appear immediately.
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Then, "he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem." So Jericho is on the last
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stretch of the way. Everything in our reading happens with that just ahead.
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Jericho itself sits in an oasis in the Jordan Valley, and it's one of the lowest
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towns on earth, roughly two hundred and fifty metres below sea level.
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It stood on the main route from the crossings of the Jordan up to Jerusalem,
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and in this period it was wealthy. Ancient writers praised its palm trees, and it was
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a centre for growing balsam, a prized aromatic ointment.
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A town on a trade road, with valuable goods moving through it.
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That matters for the second story.
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First, though, the blind man. Luke doesn't give his name.
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He's sitting by the road, begging, and he hears a crowd passing and asks what's
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going on. When they tell him it's Jesus of Nazareth, he starts calling out, "Jesus,
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you son of David, have mercy on me!" Son of David is a royal title.
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It points to David's line of kings, and here a beggar uses it out loud on the road
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to Jerusalem. The people at the front of the crowd tell him to be quiet.
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He shouts all the more.
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Then Jesus stops. He has him brought over and asks a question that seems to have an
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obvious answer: "What do you want me to do?" But he asks it anyway, and lets the
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man say it for himself. "Lord, that I may see again."
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Jesus tells him his faith has healed him, he sees, and he follows, glorifying God,
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and the whole crowd praises God with him.
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If you know the other Gospels, you may have noticed some differences.
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Mark tells this story too, and there the man has a name, Bartimaeus, son of
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Timaeus, and the healing happens as Jesus is leaving Jericho, not arriving.
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Matthew also sets it on the way out of Jericho, and he has two blind men instead
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of one. Many scholars think Luke and Matthew both drew on Mark's account and
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told it in their own ways. The Gospels don't settle the differences, so I won't
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either.
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Now the second man. "There was a man named Zacchaeus.
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He was a chief tax collector, and he was rich." The name is usually explained as
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meaning pure, which is a slightly awkward thing to be called if your neighbours call
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you a sinner. And that phrase, chief tax collector, is unusual.
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The Greek word Luke uses appears only here in the Bible.
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It seems to mean someone who supervised other collectors in a district.
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To understand why people disliked him, it helps to know how taxes worked.
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Under Roman rule, the big direct taxes, on land and on people, were increasingly
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collected by officials. But tolls and customs, the charges on goods moving along
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roads and through towns, were commonly farmed out.
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That means the right to collect them was sold to contractors, who paid up front and
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then made their money back from travellers and traders, with a margin.
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The men who actually stood at the toll points worked for them.
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Their income depended on taking more than the official rate.
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Put that on a busy trade road through a rich oasis town, and you can see how a
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chief tax collector in Jericho could become very wealthy, and very unpopular.
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Jewish sources from later centuries class tax collectors with robbers, and the
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Talmud disqualifies them from serving as witnesses.
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Luke's Gospel returns to tax collectors again and again.
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John the Baptist tells them, "Collect no more than that which is appointed to you."
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Jesus calls a tax collector named Levi to follow him, and then goes to dinner at his
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house, with a great crowd of tax collectors. Jesus is mocked as "a friend
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of tax collectors and sinners." And earlier in the same chapter as our
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reading, he tells a parable about two men praying in the temple, a Pharisee and a
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tax collector, and it's the tax collector who goes home justified.
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So when Zacchaeus appears, Luke's readers have been prepared for him.
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Zacchaeus wants to see who Jesus is, but he's short, and the crowd is in the way.
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So he runs on ahead and climbs a sycamore tree. This isn't the sycamore of an
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English park. It's the sycomore fig, a fig tree with a broad crown and wide,
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spreading branches, and it was common and valued in Jericho and the land around.
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The prophet Amos describes himself as a herdsman and "a farmer of sycamore figs."
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So picture a rich official running on ahead and climbing a fig tree.
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Luke tells it without comment, and leaves us to picture it.
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Then Jesus reaches the tree, looks up, and calls him by name.
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"Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house."
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Notice who invites whom. Zacchaeus only wanted to look.
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Jesus invites himself to his house. And Zacchaeus hurries down and receives him
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joyfully. The crowd's reaction is one word in our translation: they all murmured.
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All of them. "He has gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner."
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It's the same word our translation uses earlier in Luke, when Pharisees and
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scribes murmured that "this man welcomes sinners, and eats with them."
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Then Zacchaeus stands and speaks. "Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the
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poor. If I have wrongfully exacted anything of anyone, I restore four times
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as much." Four times is a striking number. The law of Moses sets a fourfold
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repayment for a stolen sheep in the book of Exodus.
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Elsewhere, for wrongs that are confessed, it asks for the full amount plus a fifth.
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Fourfold is also the verdict David himself gives, in the second book of Samuel, when
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the prophet Nathan tells him the story of a rich man who took a poor man's lamb: "He
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must restore the lamb fourfold." So Zacchaeus is offering far more than the
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added fifth, on top of giving away half of everything.
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But here the text raises a real question, and it's worth hearing both sides.
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In Greek, as in our translation, Zacchaeus speaks in the present tense.
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I give. I restore. Many modern translations turn that into a promise, I
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will give, I will pay back, and read the scene as a conversion: the tax collector
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meets Jesus and changes on the spot. Other scholars point out that the verbs really
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are present, and read it as a defence. The crowd calls him a sinner, and Zacchaeus
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answers that he already gives half to the poor and already repays anyone he's
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wronged. On that reading, Jesus isn't rewarding a change of heart.
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He's correcting the crowd. Scholars, and translators, are divided.
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One commentary calls the promise reading much more likely.
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Another argues the opposite. Both readings fit what Jesus says next.
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"Today, salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham."
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Earlier in Luke, Jesus heals a woman who had been bent over for eighteen years and
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calls her "a daughter of Abraham." Both times, he names the person in front of him
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as one of Abraham's family. And then the line that closes the scene: "For the Son
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of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost."
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It echoes the prophet Ezekiel, where God promises, "I will seek that which was
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lost." It also gathers up Luke chapter fifteen, with its lost sheep, lost coin,
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and lost son, a story we've heard on this show.
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Luke never tells us what happened to Zacchaeus afterwards.
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Later Christian writings fill the gap. One collection from centuries later, the
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Apostolic Constitutions, names "Zacchaeus, who was once a publican" as the first
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bishop of Caesarea, and the Orthodox Church remembers him as a saint.
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Those are traditions, not part of Luke's account. In Luke, he's last seen standing
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in his own house, and Jesus goes on up the road to Jerusalem.
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So Luke leaves us two men at Jericho, side by side.
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One is poor and can't see, and he shouts until Jesus stops.
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The other is rich and can see perfectly well, but can't get a view, and he climbs.
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In both stories the crowd is in the way, and in both, Jesus stops and calls the man
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to him.
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So here's a question to sit with, and there's no right answer to it.
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Which Zacchaeus do you find easier to believe in: the man who changed that day,
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or the man who had been misjudged all along?
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Thanks for listening to Behind the Bible Verse. Scripture readings are from the
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World English Bible, British Edition, which is in the public domain.
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Every episode is checked against the text and the historical record.