Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus in the Tree
Zacchaeus was a wealthy but widely disliked tax collector in Jericho. Too short to see over the crowd, he climbed a sycamore tree to catch a glimpse of Jesus passing by — and Jesus stopped, looked up, and invited Himself to dinner at his house. The story is in Luke 19:1–10.
What was the name of the tax collector who climbed a tree to see Jesus?
👉 Zacchaeus.
An unlikely dinner guest
Tax collectors in Roman-occupied Judea were seen as traitors, often skimming extra money for themselves — Zacchaeus was wealthy precisely because of this. When Jesus chose to eat with him, the crowd grumbled that He’d gone to be the guest of “a sinner.” But the encounter changed Zacchaeus: he promised to give half his wealth to the poor and repay anyone he’d cheated four times over. Jesus’s response — “salvation has come to this house” — is one of the clearest pictures in the Gospels of transformation following simply being seen and welcomed.