Who was Zacchaeus?

The short answer

Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector in Jericho, and he was rich. He was too short to see over the crowd, so he climbed a tree to watch Jesus pass. Jesus called him down and went to his house, and Zacchaeus promised to give half his goods to the poor and pay back four times anything he had taken wrongly.

What the record says

There was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, and couldn’t because of the crowd, because he was short.

Luke 19:2 to 3

He ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree (Luke 19:4). When Jesus reached the place, he looked up:

“Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.”

Luke 19:5

The crowd grumbled that Jesus had gone to stay “with a man who is a sinner” (Luke 19:7). Zacchaeus stood up and made his promise:

“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

Jesus said, “Today, salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham” (Luke 19:9). Only Luke tells this story.

How Third Day tells it

Third Day is a novel. In the novel he goes by Yeshua, the name his family would have called him. The novel spells his name Zaccheus. In chapter five, “Jericho,” a blind beggar named Bartimaeus has just been healed, and the crowd is thick. Men who step aside for Zaccheus’s assistants close shoulder to shoulder when he comes near. Matthew, once a tax man himself, spots him first by the costly dyed border on his robe. Zaccheus runs ahead and hauls himself into a sycamore, tearing his garment. Yeshua looks up and tells him to come down, because he is staying at his house. Outside his door Zaccheus promises half of what he owns to the poor and four times back to anyone he cheated. Then the list takes all night. Matthew sorts the old toll records. Zaccheus pays the true claims and turns down a false one. He gives up a warehouse and an orchard, and he lays his torn robe on the goods table to be valued. Near dawn, when his fingers cramp, Matthew takes the stylus and writes while he talks. As the company leaves, Zaccheus presses a folded tablet into Matthew’s hand. At the top of the climb Matthew opens it.

Below the lines he had scored at dawn, four more claims ran down the wax in Zaccheus’s hand.