The Gospel of Luke mentions Zacchaeus, the tax collector who climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus.
The story appears in Luke 19:1–10. Zacchaeus is described as a chief tax collector and a wealthy man in Jericho. Because he was short and could not see over the crowd, he climbed a sycamore-fig tree along Jesus’s route. Jesus then called him down and announced that he would stay at Zacchaeus’s house.
Zacchaeus’s response is central to the episode: he promises to give half his possessions to the poor and repay four times anyone he has defrauded. Jesus concludes that salvation has come to the household and says that the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.
The story is unique to Luke among the canonical Gospels. Matthew also features tax collectors, including Matthew himself, which sometimes causes readers to assign Zacchaeus’s episode to the wrong Gospel.