Who was Zacchaeus?

Stephen Gottschalk

First of all, as people's sizes go, Zacchaeus was short. Not tall. Not medium. But short—very short. So short that when Zacchaeus wanted to get a good look at Jesus coming along the road, he had to climb a tree to see over the crowd. It was a sycamore tree—a tree with fine soft wood and wide-spreading branches.

The town where Zacchaeus lived was called Jericho. It was in the Jordan Valley not far from Jerusalem. Just before Jesus came through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem, he had healed a blind beggar, named Bartimaeus, who called out to him above the noise of the crowd from where he sat by the road outside of Jericho.

If you have read the story of Zacchaeus in Luke,^{See Luke 19:1–10 .} you know what happened when Jesus came into Jericho. He passed under the very tree Zacchaeus had climbed to see him better. Not only did Jesus look up and see Zacchaeus; he also told Zacchaeus that he was coming to stay at his house that day.

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