When I was young, preachers would sometimes cause minor amusement in my family by highlighting the greedy and immoral nature of tax collectors in the New Testament. My mother worked for what is now called His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs as an actual tax collector, though didn’t get a cut of what she raised.
Zacchaeus is often held up as a tax collector who repented of looting his fellow countrymen when he met Jesus. But I heard it preached recently that this interpretation is actually completely wrong. So what’s the actual deal with Zacchaeus?
Well, let’s start by looking at the scripture. Here’s the start of Luke 19 in the ESV, a typically word-for-word translation of the Greek:
[Jesus] entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
There are two curious bits here.
First, the tense that Zacchaeus uses for giving his goods away is in the present, not future. He is not actually saying “It’s a fair cop, governor. I’ll give some money to the poor and pay people back.” He may well be talking about what he already does.
As for the line saying “if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold”, if his wealth really was basically derived from impropriety, he wouldn’t be able to afford to pay back four times what he’d taken. More likely, he’s speaking in hyperbole.
Secondly, Zacchaeus was keen to see Jesus and “joyfully” received him. There is no suggestion that he is confessing his sins or repenting.
As pastor David Lose writes:
Admittedly, one can construe Zacchaeus’ pledge of future behaviour as repentance, but it … contrasts starkly with the previous verbal penitence, for instance, of the tax collector at the Temple (18:13). Nor does Jesus commend Zacchaeus’ penitence, or his faith, or his change of heart. He merely pronounces blessing, blessing based not on anything Zacchaeus has done but simply because he, like those grumbling around him, is an Israelite, a son of Abraham. Further, Zacchaeus does not offer his financial disclosure in response to anything Jesus has said; rather, it falls on the heels of the grumbling of the crowd. Perhaps it is a response to Jesus’ presence, but perhaps it is his bewilderment at the crowd’s complaint or a defense of his reputation. In either case, I suspect that Zacchaeus is not turning over a new leaf as much as he is lifting up an old one for all to see.
So while it’s commonly held that Zacchaeus repented in that passage in Luke, there’s a strong case to be made that he was a victim of smears and prejudice.