Zacchaeus was a Wee Little Man

 

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through.

A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus;

he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy.

He wanted to see who Jesus was,

but being a short man, he could not, because of the crowd.

So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore fig tree

to see Him, since Jesus was coming that way.

Luke 19:1-4

My middle daughter is a professional tutor in the Washington, D.C. area.  She travels a lot – at times as far south as Fredericksburg.  If those occasions are early in the morning, she calls me to chat [and to keep her awake].  This morning we were talking about my current gardening project, and somehow that morphed to Zacchaeus and the sycamore tree. She was pondering how in the world the very short Zacchaeus could have climbed the massively tall Sycamore trees that she has seen here in the eastern United States.  How, indeed?

As I looked at the text of this story in Luke 19, I noticed that the NIV Bible calls it a sycamore-fig tree.  Having never seen the “fig” part before [it certainly is not part of the little song I have been singing since childhood], I decided to do a little research.  I found that the American sycamore tree is actually a maple – often called the Great Maple.  It is a rapidly growing tree, reaching a mature height of fifty to sixty feet.  It is a native of Central Europe, especially the forests of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, etc.  This is not the tree that was growing in Jericho; if it was, a very short man most certainly could not have climbed it.

The tree that Zacchaeus scrambled up in his quest to see Jesus was a Ficus sycomorus, called a sycamore-fig or a mulberry fig.  This is a very large branched, thick tree, often characterized by lower branches that grow close to the ground, and edible figs [not of the greatest quality, however].   It is much easier to see how the little tax collector of Jericho could have scrambled up this tree and found a nice fat branch to sit on.  His ingenuity brought him face to face with the Master, a moment guaranteed to change his life forever.