Luke 19: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

In Jericho, Jesus calls the wealthy chief tax collector Zacchaeus down from a tree and stays at his house, and Zacchaeus pledges half his goods to the poor and fourfold repayment for anyone he has cheated. Because Jesus is near Jerusalem and people expect the kingdom of God to appear right away, he tells a parable about a nobleman who leaves to be made king, entrusts money to ten servants, and on his return rewards, rebukes, and punishes according to what each did. Jesus then rides into Jerusalem on a colt while the crowd of disciples praises God, weeps over the city and foretells its siege and destruction, drives the sellers out of the temple, and teaches there daily while the chief priests and scribes look for a way to kill him.

Claim by Claim

1. 19:1
   • Jesus entered Jericho.
   • Jesus was passing through Jericho.
2. 19:2
   • There was a man named Zacchaeus.
   • Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector.
   • Zacchaeus was rich.
3. 19:3
   • Zacchaeus was trying to see who Jesus was.
   • Zacchaeus could not see because of the crowd.
   • Zacchaeus was short in stature.
4. 19:4
   • Zacchaeus ran on ahead.
   • Zacchaeus climbed up into a sycamore-fig tree.
   • Zacchaeus climbed the tree in order to see Jesus.
   • Jesus was about to pass that way.
5. 19:5
   • Jesus came to the place.
   • Jesus looked up.
   • Jesus saw Zacchaeus.
   • Jesus told Zacchaeus to hurry and come down.
   • Jesus said that he must stay at Zacchaeus's house that day.
6. 19:6
   • Zacchaeus hurried and came down.
   • Zacchaeus received Jesus joyfully.
7. 19:7
   • All who saw it murmured.
   • They said that Jesus had gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner.
8. 19:8
   • Zacchaeus stood.
   • Zacchaeus spoke to the Lord.
   • Zacchaeus said he gives half of his goods to the poor.
   • Zacchaeus said that if he has taken anything from anyone by false accusation, he restores it fourfold.
9. 19:9
   • Jesus said to him that salvation had come to this house that day.
   • Jesus said the reason was that this man also is a son of Abraham.
10. 19:10
    • The Son of man came to seek that which was lost.
    • The Son of man came to save that which was lost.
11. 19:11
    • The people were hearing these things.
    • Jesus went on to speak a parable.
    • He spoke it because he was near Jerusalem.
    • He spoke it because they thought the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately.
12. 19:12
    • Jesus said a certain nobleman went into a far country.
    • The nobleman went to receive a kingdom for himself.
    • The nobleman intended to return.
13. 19:13
    • The nobleman called ten of his servants.
    • He gave them ten pounds.
    • He told them to trade with the money until he came back.
14. 19:14
    • His citizens hated him.
    • They sent a delegation after him.
    • They said they did not want this man to reign over them.
15. 19:15
    • The nobleman returned having received the kingdom.
    • He commanded the servants to be called to him.
    • These were the servants to whom he had given the money.
    • He did this so he might know how much each had gained by trading.
16. 19:16
    • The first servant came.
    • He said the master's pound had gained ten pounds.
17. 19:17
    • The master said, Well done, good servant.
    • The master said the servant had been faithful in a very little.
    • The master gave him authority over ten cities.
18. 19:18
    • The second servant came.
    • He said the master's pound had made five pounds.
19. 19:19
    • The master said to this one also that he should be over five cities.
20. 19:20
    • Another servant came.
    • He presented the master's pound.
    • He said he had kept it laid up in a cloth.
21. 19:21
    • The servant said he feared the master.
    • The servant said the master is a harsh man.
    • The servant said the master takes up what he did not lay down.
    • The servant said the master reaps what he did not sow.
22. 19:22
    • The master said he would judge the servant out of the servant's own mouth.
    • The master called him a wicked servant.
    • The master said the servant knew that he was a harsh man.
    • The master said he takes up what he did not lay down.
    • The master said he reaps what he did not sow.
    • It is not marked whether the master states this or asks it as a question.
23. 19:23
    • The master asked why the servant did not put his money in the bank.
    • The master said that at his coming he could then have collected his own with interest.
24. 19:24
    • The master spoke to those standing by.
    • He told them to take the pound from that servant.
    • He told them to give it to the one who has ten pounds.
25. 19:25
    • They said to him that the man already has ten pounds.
26. 19:26
    • He said that to everyone who has, more shall be given.
    • He said that from him who has not, even what he has shall be taken away from him.
27. 19:27
    • He called them his enemies.
    • They were unwilling for him to reign over them.
    • He ordered that they be brought here.
    • He ordered that they be slain in front of him.
28. 19:28
    • Jesus finished speaking these things.
    • Jesus went on ahead.
    • Jesus was going up to Jerusalem.
29. 19:29
    • Jesus came near to Bethphage and Bethany.
    • These were at the mountain called the mount of Olives.
    • Jesus sent two of his disciples.
30. 19:30
    • Jesus told them to go into the village opposite them.
    • He said that on entering it they would find a colt tied.
    • He said no man had ever sat on that colt.
    • He told them to untie it.
    • He told them to bring it.
31. 19:31
    • Jesus said that if anyone asks why they are untying it, they should answer.
    • The answer they were to give is that the Lord has need of it.
32. 19:32
    • Those who were sent went away.
    • They found it just as Jesus had told them.
33. 19:33
    • They were untying the colt.
    • The owners of the colt asked them why they were untying the colt.
34. 19:34
    • They said that the Lord has need of it.
35. 19:35
    • They brought the colt to Jesus.
    • They threw their garments on the colt.
    • They set Jesus on it.
36. 19:36
    • As Jesus went along, people spread their clothes on the road.
37. 19:37
    • Jesus was drawing near, at the descent of the mount of Olives.
    • The whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice.
    • They began to praise God with a loud voice.
    • They praised him for all the mighty works they had seen.
38. 19:38
    • They said, Blessed be the King who comes in the name of the Lord.
    • They said, Peace in heaven.
    • They said, Glory in the highest.
39. 19:39
    • Some of the Pharisees in the crowd spoke to Jesus.
    • They called him Teacher.
    • They told him to rebuke his disciples.
40. 19:40
    • Jesus answered them.
    • Jesus said that if these were to keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.
41. 19:41
    • Jesus came near.
    • Jesus saw the city.
    • Jesus wept over it.
42. 19:42
    • Jesus said, If you had known in this your day the things that belong to your peace
    • The sentence is broken off, and what would have followed is not stated.
    • Jesus said that now those things are hidden from the city's eyes.
43. 19:43
    • Jesus said days will come upon the city.
    • In those days its enemies will build a siege barricade against it.
    • Its enemies will surround it.
    • Its enemies will hem it in on every side.
44. 19:44
    • They will level the city to the ground.
    • They will level its children within it.
    • They will not leave one stone upon another in it.
    • The reason is that the city did not recognize the time of its visitation.
45. 19:45
    • Jesus went into the temple.
    • Jesus began to cast out those who were selling there.
    • Jesus began to cast out those who were buying.
46. 19:46
    • Jesus said to them that it is written.
    • The writing says that his house is a house of prayer.
    • Jesus said they had made it a den of robbers.
47. 19:47
    • Jesus was teaching daily in the temple.
    • The chief priests were seeking to destroy him.
    • The scribes were seeking to destroy him.
    • The chief men of the people were seeking to destroy him.
48. 19:48
    • They could not find what they might do.
    • All the people were hanging on his words as they listened to him.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

19:1

Jericho lay in the Jordan valley about seventeen miles northeast of Jerusalem and some three thousand feet lower, a warm, prosperous town on a main road into Judea with a customs post on it. That is why a senior tax official would be stationed there. The trip from Jericho to Jerusalem is a hard climb, which is why verse 28 speaks of "ascending up to Jerusalem"; going to Jerusalem was called going up whatever direction you came from, but from Jericho it was also literally true.

19:2

The King James "publican" has nothing to do with taverns. It means a tax collector working under Roman authority. Such men bought the right to collect taxes and tolls in a district and kept whatever they could raise above the sum they had contracted to hand over, so the work invited overcharging and had no fixed honest rate. A "chief among the publicans" held the contract for a district and drew a share from the collectors working under him. These men were despised twice over, as cheats and as employees of a foreign occupation.

19:3

In 1611 "the press" meant the crowd itself, the pressed-together mass of people. "Little of stature" means short in height; it is not a comment on his age or importance.

19:4

Not the tree Americans call a sycamore. This is the fig-mulberry, a wide tree with a short trunk and low branches spreading sideways, easy for a grown man to scramble into in a hurry. It was common along roads in the Jordan valley and its fruit was cheap food.

19:5

Eating and sleeping in someone's house was not casual in this culture. A guest was publicly tied to his host, and by inviting himself in, Jesus was making a visible statement about where he stood in relation to a man the town despised.

19:7

The complaint is about hospitality. To lodge and eat at a man's table was a public act of acceptance, a statement that he was fit company. A "sinner" in this usage is someone whose life or trade put him outside what observant people would associate with, and a tax collector was a standing example.

19:8

Two things sit under this verse. The King James "by false accusation" translates a Greek word for squeezing money out of people by threats or trumped-up charges, the characteristic abuse of a tax collector's position. And the verbs "I give" and "I restore" are present tense in Greek, which can be heard either as what Zacchaeus already does as a standing practice or as what he is undertaking from this moment; the Greek does not settle it, and translations divide. Fourfold repayment was the penalty the law of Moses set for a stolen sheep that had been killed or sold, far heavier than the ordinary restitution of the sum plus a fifth.

19:9

"A son of Abraham" means a member of the Jewish people, a descendant of Abraham and so an heir of what was promised to that people. The crowd's grumbling in verse 7 had in effect written Zacchaeus out of it.

19:10

"The Son of man" is the phrase Jesus uses of himself throughout the Gospels. In ordinary Hebrew and Aramaic the expression simply means a human being, a mortal, but it is also the title of the figure in Daniel 7:13 who comes "with the clouds of heaven" and is given an everlasting kingdom. How much of each sense a given saying carries has been argued over since antiquity.

19:11

Many people expected that when God's kingdom arrived it would arrive as a public, political event: Roman rule ended and Israel restored, all at once. Since Jesus was now within a day's walk of Jerusalem, the crowd assumed it was about to happen there.

19:12

The setup would have been immediately recognizable. Rome, not local custom, decided who ruled in Judea, and a claimant had to travel to Rome in person to have his kingship confirmed. Herod the Great's son Archelaus did exactly that in 4 BC, and a delegation of Jews followed him there to argue against his appointment. He came back with a reduced title and a long memory. He also owned a palace at Jericho, where this story is being told.

19:13

"Pounds" translates "minas." A mina was worth about a hundred denarii, and a denarius was a laborer's pay for a day, so one mina was roughly three months' wages for a working man. Each of the ten servants gets one. "Occupy till I come" is a 1611 idiom: occupy here means trade with it, put it to work, not hold your position or stay put.

19:14

"His citizens" are the people of the territory he expected to rule. Sending a delegation to the emperor to object to a proposed king was a real and available move, and it is what Archelaus's subjects actually did.

19:17

A ruler newly confirmed in his kingship parceled out towns and districts to men he trusted, to govern and collect revenue on his behalf. The reward is the ordinary machinery of the world the story is set in.

19:20

The King James "napkin" means a cloth for wiping the face, a handkerchief or small towel. It has nothing to do with table linen in the modern sense, and nothing to do with infants.

19:21

"Austere" in 1611 meant severe, exacting, hard in dealing. The two charges that follow sound like proverbs: taking up money he never deposited and reaping a field he never sowed, that is, collecting the profit on other people's work.

19:23

"Usury" in 1611 meant interest of any size, not excessive interest as the word means now. The "bank" is a money changer's table, where funds left on deposit earned a return. The law of Moses forbade charging interest to a fellow Israelite, though not to an outsider, which is part of why the subject carried an edge.

19:27

Reprisals of this kind were not invented for the story. A claimant who came home with Rome's confirmation had the legal power of life and death over the men who had petitioned against him, and the return of Archelaus was remembered for exactly this sort of settling of accounts.

19:28

"Ascending up to Jerusalem" is literal geography as well as an idiom. Jericho lies near the lowest inhabited point on earth, and the road to Jerusalem climbs about 3,000 feet over some fifteen miles, so people always spoke of going up to the city.

19:29

Bethphage and Bethany were villages on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, roughly two miles from Jerusalem. The Mount of Olives is a ridge running north and south across the Kidron valley, east of the city and higher than it. The road from Bethany crests that ridge and then drops toward the city, so the whole of Jerusalem and the temple opens up at once at the descent mentioned in verse 37.

19:30

An animal that had never been worked or ridden was the kind set apart for sacred use; the law of Moses requires an unworked animal in certain rites. A young donkey also carries an association a first-century hearer would catch: in Zechariah 9:9 a king comes to Jerusalem riding a donkey rather than a war horse, a passage Matthew and John quote at this point in the story.

19:31

"The Lord" translates a word that in everyday speech simply meant the master or the owner. The owners in verse 33 could hear the answer either way, and the Greek leaves it open.

19:35

The "garments" are outer cloaks, the heavy square of cloth worn over everything else. For most people it was the most valuable thing they wore and doubled as a blanket at night. Thrown over the animal's back it serves as a saddle.

19:36

Spreading cloaks on the road in front of a man was how a king was greeted. When Jehu was proclaimed king, his fellow officers spread their garments under him on the bare steps (2 Kings 9:13).

19:37

"Mighty works" is the standard King James term for miracles.

19:38

The shout quotes Psalm 118:26, one of a group of psalms sung at the great festivals and used to greet pilgrims coming up to the temple. The word "King" is not in the psalm; it is added here. "Glory in the highest" means glory in the highest heaven, where God is; "the highest" is a way of saying that place without naming it.

19:39

The Pharisees were a movement, mostly lay rather than priestly, known for exact and detailed keeping of the law and for applying to daily life the purity rules that strictly applied to priests. "Master" in the King James here does not mean owner or employer; it translates the ordinary word for a teacher, which is how the rendering gives it.

19:40

Stones crying out is a deliberately absurd image, a saying that means the thing being announced is so large that if the people fell silent the landscape itself would have to say it.

19:42

There is a play on words here that English cannot carry. The name Jerusalem was commonly heard as containing shalom, the Hebrew word for peace, so "the things which belong unto thy peace," said over this city of all cities, lands with a particular sting. "This thy day" means this day that was yours, your moment.

19:43

The King James "cast a trench about thee" does not mean dig a ditch. The word stands for a siege wall: a rampart of piled earth topped with sharpened stakes, thrown up right around a city so that nobody can get in or out. It was standard Roman siege practice, and it is what the army of Titus built around Jerusalem in AD 70.

19:44

"Thy children within thee" speaks of the city as a mother and of the people inside her walls as her children. "The time of thy visitation" translates a phrase meaning the moment when God comes to look on a people. Depending on the passage it can mean coming to help or coming to call to account, and both senses are available in the word here.

19:45

The buying and selling went on in the outer court of the temple, the large open area open to anyone. Animals and birds without blemish were sold there for sacrifice, and money changers exchanged ordinary coinage, which carried images and foreign inscriptions, for the currency accepted for the temple tax. The trade was a practical service to pilgrims who had traveled too far to bring an animal with them.

19:46

Two quotations, both of which the first hearers would have recognized. "My house is the house of prayer" comes from Isaiah 56:7, where the sentence goes on "for all people." "A den of thieves" comes from Jeremiah 7:11, spoken about the temple of Jeremiah's own day. A den is the cave a band holes up in between raids, not the place where the robbery is committed, and the word behind "thieves" means a bandit or brigand, a man of violence, not a petty thief.

19:47

The "chief priests" were the priestly aristocracy of Jerusalem: the serving high priest, men who had held that office before him, and the officers who ran the temple and its treasury. The "scribes" were the professional experts in the law of Moses, trained to copy it, teach it and give rulings from it, which is why the rendering calls them teachers of the law.

19:48

The King James "very attentive to hear him" renders a vivid Greek verb: the people were hanging on him as they listened.