Big Idea: Two incidents at Jericho demonstrate Jesus’s mission to save the lost, whatever their place in society, whether oppressed or oppressor.

Understanding the Text

The journey that began in 9:51 is near its end, as Jesus and his disciples cross the Jordan and enter Jericho before the final climb up to Jerusalem. Two events in Jericho illustrate again the deep social divisions that came to our attention in 18:14–30, and the issue of the salvation of the rich (18:18–27) is explored further in the story of Zacchaeus, which provides a poignant contrast to that of the rich ruler. It also takes up again, and brings to a climax, the recurrent theme of Jesus’s willingness to mix with “tax collectors and sinners” (5:27–32; 7:29–35, 36–50; 15:1–32) in order to bring them his message of salvation. The salvation here again of a man whom other Jews would regard as beyond the pale forms the setting for an epigram (19:10) that sums up Luke’s understanding of the mission of Jesus, already powerfully illustrated in the parables of chapter 15.

Historical and Cultural Background

The ancient city of Jericho was by this time an affluent settlement, recently elaborately expanded by Herod; its warm winter climate made it a favored place for leading citizens of Jerusalem to have a second home. Such an administrative center was a suitable location for a “chief tax collector” (the term occurs nowhere else), not an ordinary local official like Levi and his friends (5:27–29), but probably the head officer for the region, hence his affluence. As such, he may be expected to have been a familiar, if very unpopular, figure in the community. His choice of a fig-mulberry tree (which has large leaves) indicates a man who feels safer out of the public eye.

Interpretive Insights

18:35 sitting by the roadside begging. A blind person had little alternative for making a living. Giving alms to the poor was a recognized part of Jewish religious duty, and pilgrim crowds on the way to Jerusalem for the Passover festival might be expected to be especially amenable.

18:37 Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. “Jesus” was a common name and so required a descriptive “surname,” particularly in this Judean area where Jesus was not a local. But his reputation is now such that a stranger, even in Jericho, may be expected to know who he is. For “of Nazareth” as Jesus’s public title, compare 4:34; 24:19.

18:38 Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! This is the only time in Luke that Jesus is addressed as “Son of David,” and the repetition of the title in the next verse shows that it is meant to be noticed. To the crowds he is simply Jesus of Nazareth, a noted teacher and wonder worker, but this blind man seems somehow to have grasped the deeper truth about Jesus: he is the Messiah. The fact that, when cured, he will “follow” Jesus (18:43) suggests that this was more than just flattery to gain attention. His insight prepares for the more general acclamation of Jesus in 19:38 as “the king.” For Jesus’s own comments on the title “Son of David,” see also 20:41–44.

18:39 Those who led the way rebuked him. We are not told that they were disciples, but the use of the same term as in 18:15 (“rebuke”) invites us to compare these two attempts to keep unimportant people from gaining Jesus’s attention.

18:40 Jesus stopped. Perhaps the use of the messianic title made it clear that the man was not just begging for money. At any rate, Jesus, unlike his associates, will not turn away the socially insignificant and vulnerable.

18:41 Lord, I want to see. This seems obvious to us, but a beggar who was no longer blind would lose his chief asset for begging and thus an uncertain future. It was a prospect that required real “faith” (18:42).

18:42 Receive your sight; your faith has healed you. This is the only specific account of the healing of the blind in Luke (though see 7:21–22), a direct fulfillment of the Nazareth manifesto (4:18). For the healing formula involving “faith,” compare 7:50; 8:48; 17:19. The Greek word for “healed” (s?z?) here (as in 8:48; 17:19) is the normal word for “saved,” hence the appropriateness of this same formula in 7:50, where it refers to spiritual rather than physical healing. The use of the same verb (and the noun “salvation”) in 19:9–10 links these two stories of salvation, one primarily physical, the other spiritual.

18:43 followed Jesus, praising God . . . they also praised God. “Followed” probably means that he took up the life of discipleship in place of a life of begging, and he would be among the crowd that will accompany Jesus to Jerusalem. The double mention of praising God prepares us for the arrival of this group in Jerusalem in 19:37, where the praise will relate to “all the miracles they had seen.”

19:2 Zacchaeus. On his status, see “Historical and Cultural Background” above.

19:4 climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him. This is not a very dignified thing for a socially prominent man to do, but he may have hoped to be hidden by the large leaves. The “sycamore-fig” is a “fig-mulberry” (sykon, “fig” + morea, “mulberry”), a luxuriant fruiting tree of the Mediterranean unrelated to the tree of the maple family for which “sycamore” is normally used.

19:5 I must stay at your house today. For Jesus to invite himself to stay in the house of such a man was an even more blatant social outrage than his acceptance of Levi’s hospitality in 5:29–30 and also a slight to the more worthy citizens who might have welcomed him. For Jesus, the work of “salvation” took precedence over social protocol, and he recognized in this powerful but despised man someone “lost” needing to be found.

19:8 Look, Lord! Here and now I give . . . pay back. This translation gives a performative sense to the Greek present tenses underlying “give” and “pay back.” Alternatively, it has been suggested that Zacchaeus (like the Pharisee in 18:12) is boastfully claiming that these are already his regular habits, but not only is it difficult to see how one could regularly give away half of one’s possessions, but also the sequence of the story better suits a performative sense: this is a decisive, one-time response to the presence of Jesus. Luke records no explicit statement of repentance, but the reader assumes, and Jesus’s comments in 19:9 will presuppose, that so radical an act of restitution must spring from a fundamental change of heart and a determination to avoid unjust exploitation in the future.

It is interesting to compare Zacchaeus’s declaration with what Jesus demanded of the rich man in 18:22. Zacchaeus gives half of his possessions, not all, though the additional restitution of 400 percent of his ill-gotten gains (the law required only 120 percent [Lev. 6:5; Num. 5:7]) would probably make a sizable hole in the other half. And we are not told that he left home and followed Jesus as a disciple (as the blind man has done [18:43]). But there is no hint that his response is insufficient; rather the opposite. Does this suggest that 18:22 may not be intended as a rigid rule so much as a diagnostic test of the depth of a person’s commitment, and that its practical outworking may differ in different situations?

19:9 Today salvation has come to this house. “Today” indicates that Zacchaeus’s declaration, just made, is the evidence of salvation. It indicates so radical a change that it can be understood as the sort of “repentance” that causes joy in heaven according to 15:7, 10. Zechariah and Simeon sang of God’s “salvation” coming to the people as a whole (1:69, 71, 77; 2:30), but now it is brought down to the individual level.

this man, too, is a son of Abraham. Jesus issues this riposte to the grumblers in 19:7. To some Jews, a tax collector (and especially a chief tax collector), even if Jewish by birth, had forfeited any right to be counted among the chosen people. But Zacchaeus’s repentance has restored his birthright. It was to Abraham that God’s promises to his people had especially been made (1:55, 73), and it was in association with Abraham that his people were to enjoy God’s salvation (13:28; 16:22–30).

19:10 The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. The words echo Ezekiel 34:16, where God is seen as the good shepherd of his people, rescuing them from neglect and exploitation by their failed rulers. God’s mission is now fulfilled through the Son of Man, whose concern for “the lost” was graphically portrayed in the parables of chapter 15.

Theological Insights

Several scholars, notably I. H. Marshall,1have located the focus of Luke’s message in the term “salvation” (and its verb “save,” which tends to be obscured in English versions by the use of “heal” instead of “save” where the problem is physical). This emphasis is well summarized in 19:10, but so also in these two stories, representing two men who were “lost” in different ways, but who found salvation through Jesus. The fact that they come from opposite ends of the social spectrum underlines again Luke’s depiction of the wide scope of Jesus’s ministry, which does not defer to worldly status or advantage. It is right to speak of a “bias toward the poor” in Luke’s portrayal of Jesus, and it may have seemed at times that the rich are regarded as irredeemably bad (16:19–31; 18:18–27); but here is a rich man who also finds salvation. Even he can be a true son of Abraham.

Teaching the Text

The preceding comments[2] have attempted to treat this pair of stories as deliberately placed side by side for comparison, showing that Jesus is here to save both the oppressed and the oppressor. Is this is a valid insight? What other points of comparison and contrast might be drawn out? What contribution does their juxtaposition make to Luke’s overall agenda of presenting Jesus as the Savior?

Both stories can be approached by encouraging listeners to put themselves in the place of an onlooker: in the first, as a member of the crowd traveling with Jesus; in the second, as an inhabitant of Jericho. Both groups discourage Jesus from acting on behalf of these two men. In your teaching, try to reconstruct the social expectations and constraints, and note how Jesus overrode them. What people in our society today might correspond to the blind beggar and to Zacchaeus? How would we react to seeing them treated as Jesus does here?

Since in Luke the Zacchaeus story is the climax of Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem or “gospel to the outcast” (Luke 9–19), it may be helpful when teaching this passage to review some of the key texts in Luke that carry forward this theme. Notice especially these three: the call of Levi (5:27–32), the parables of lost things (chap. 15), and the Zacchaeus episode. The call of Levi concerns a tax collector and opposition to Jesus’s dining with sinners. It climaxes with Jesus’s claim that, as the great physician, he has not come to call the self-righteous, but sinners (5:31–32). The parables of the lost and found in chapter 15 begin with this same theme of opposition to Jesus’s dining with sinners (15:1–2) and climax with the “lost” being found. Now, climactically, Jesus is criticized for dining with a chief tax collector (19:7)—the worst of the worst—and concludes by announcing that he has come “to seek and to save the lost” (19:10). These connections can reveal to your audience that in Luke Jesus is portrayed especially as the Savior of lost people everywhere.

The Zacchaeus story also invites us to think again about wealth, its dangers, and its proper use, themes we have seen again and again in Luke’s Gospel. What makes this rich man a possible subject for salvation in contrast to the rich man in 18:18–25? How does Zacchaeus’s massive “redistribution of wealth” relate to Jesus’s demands in 12:33; 18:22? In what ways might God be looking for a similar response from rich people today?

Illustrating the Text

In stopping to heal the blind man, Jesus shows his concern for the lowly and outcast.

Christian Fiction: In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do?, by Charles Monroe Sheldon. Among the top-selling books of all time, this novel (1897) is set in a small railroad town and has as its premise the imitation of Christ, which in this case means doing instead of just talking. The novel begins when a poor, jobless man shows up at the office of Rev. Henry Maxwell on a Friday to present his need when the pastor is busily composing his Sunday sermon. The preoccupied pastor is dismissive.

On Sunday morning, the same man appears at the church while the congregation is singing “All for Jesus, all for Jesus, / All my being’s ransomed powers,” and he proceeds to walk down the aisle until he reaches the open space in front of the pulpit. He faces the people, confronting them directly but inoffensively, telling them the story of his job loss, of the death of his wife, and of his having “tramped” through the city without finding any “word of sympathy or comfort except from your minister here, who said he was sorry for me and hoped I would find a job somewhere.” He says about himself, “I’m not an ordinary tramp, though I don’t know of any teaching of Jesus that makes one kind of a tramp less worth saving than another. . . . What do you mean when you sing, ‘I’ll go with Him, with Him, all the way’? Do you mean that you are suffering and denying yourselves and trying to save lost, suffering humanity just as I understand Jesus did?”

At the end of his moving talk, he falls over and later dies, precipitating the pastor’s reevaluation of his whole life. Rev. Henry Maxwell then begins to live in light of Christ’s model.3

True conversion results in profound change, including a change in relationship to past sin and to one’s possessions.

All people need to turn to Jesus and be saved.

Film: Regarding Henry, directed by Mike Nichols. This 1991 film shows how a person can completely reform his or her life when shocked into awareness, a metaphor for what this passage is saying. Henry is an ambitious, self-focused, arrogant, even ruthless, highly successful Manhattan lawyer who has a beautiful wife and a troubled adolescent daughter, both of whom he sacrifices to his ambition, workaholism, and a secret affair. One evening, as he is buying a pack of cigarettes, he interrupts a burglary at a corner store and is shot and seriously wounded. Having been shot in the frontal lobe of his brain, he suffers some brain damage and is unable to move or talk. In time, with therapy, he regains his speech and mobility and begins to see how wrong his life has been in every way. With this growing awareness, he starts to change everything: the way he lives and relates to his wife and child.