Zaccheus Converted
1 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through.
2 And there was a man called Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector [a superintendent to whom others reported], and he was rich.
3 Zaccheus was trying to see who Jesus was, but he could not see [a]because of the crowd, for he was short in stature.
4 So he ran on ahead [of the crowd] and climbed up in a sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass through that way.
5 When Jesus reached the place, He looked up and said to him, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.”
6 So Zaccheus hurried and came down, and welcomed Jesus with joy.
7 When the people saw it, they all began muttering [in discontent], “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a [notorious] sinner.”
8 Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “See, Lord, I am [now] giving half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone out of anything, I will give back four times as much.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this household, because he, too, is a [[b]spiritual] son of Abraham; 10 for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
Footnotes
[a] Luke 19:3 Or from the crowd.
[b] Luke 19:9 By changing both his old way of thinking and his behavior Zaccheus proved that his faith in God was real.
