Who climbed a tree to see Jesus according to the Bible?

According to the Bible, Zacchaeus climbed a tree to see Jesus. The story appears in Luke 19:1–10, where Zacchaeus climbs a sycamore tree because he is too short to see over the crowd surrounding Jesus.

Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector and a wealthy man living in Jericho. Tax collectors were often unpopular because they worked for Rome and could be associated with dishonest or excessive collections. Despite his social reputation, Zacchaeus was eager to see Jesus and went to considerable effort to catch a glimpse of him.

When Jesus reached the tree, he looked up and told Zacchaeus to come down, saying that he would stay at his house that day. Zacchaeus welcomed him joyfully and promised to give half his possessions to the poor and repay anyone he had cheated four times over.

A common mix-up is the tree itself: translations variously call it a sycamore, sycamore-fig, or fig tree. The person who climbed it, however, is consistently Zacchaeus, not one of Jesus’ disciples.