The chapter
Simply A short, rich, unpopular tax official climbs a tree to see over a crowd and ends up with Jesus in his house that evening. Then a parable about money left with servants while a man goes away to be made king. Then the last stretch of the journey ends: he rides into Jerusalem while people spread their cloaks on the road, stops on the way down the Mount of Olives to weep over the city, and goes into the temple and throws out the traders.
Context The journey that began at 9:51 ends here, and the book marks it: verse 28 says he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem, and verse 41 has him arrive within sight of it. Four hundred and six verses, thirty-five per cent of Luke, have been spent getting to this hill. What happens at the top of it is not a triumph. Verse 41 says he wept, and the four sentences that follow describe the city being surrounded and levelled. This weeping is in no other Gospel.
Verses 1-10
Simply In Jericho a chief tax collector called Zacchaeus, who is rich and short, cannot see over the crowd, so he runs ahead and climbs a sycamore. Jesus stops under it, looks up, calls him by name and says he must stay at his house today. Zacchaeus is delighted; everyone else complains that he has gone to stay with a sinner. Zacchaeus stands up and says he gives half his goods to the poor and pays back four times over anything he has taken wrongly. Jesus says salvation has come to this house today, and that this man too is a son of Abraham.
Context The figure at verse 8 is a legal one and it can be looked up. Exodus 22:1, open in this app, sets fourfold repayment as the penalty for a stolen sheep, and Numbers 5:7 sets the ordinary restitution at the full amount plus a fifth. Zacchaeus applies the thief's rate to himself rather than the ordinary one, and applies it only to what he took wrongly, which is a separate promise from the half he gives away. Verse 9 answers the crowd rather than him: they had called him a sinner, and the reply is that he too is a SON OF ABRAHAM, the same phrase used of the bent woman at 13:16. Both times it is said about someone the room had written off.
Verses 11-27
Simply Because people think the Kingdom is about to appear, Jesus tells a story. A nobleman goes to a far country to be made king, leaving ten servants a mina each to trade with. His own citizens send a delegation after him to say they do not want him as king. He comes back as king anyway. One servant has made ten minas, one five, and one has kept his wrapped in a cloth because he was afraid of a hard master. The first two are put in charge of cities; the third has his mina taken away. The citizens who refused him are killed in front of him.
Context Matthew 25:14 to 30 tells a story with the same skeleton and it is not the same story. There a man travelling abroad gives three servants five, two and one talent, amounts scaled to ability, and the third buries his and is thrown out. Here ten servants each get the SAME amount, one mina, and only three are reported on. And there is a whole second plot Matthew does not have: a man going to be made KING, citizens who send word that they refuse him, and verse 27, where they are executed. Verse 11 says why the story is being told, which is that people thought the Kingdom was about to appear immediately. This file reports the two versions side by side and does not merge them, and it does not soften verse 27, which is in the story the character tells about himself.
Verses 28-48
Simply He sends two disciples for a colt nobody has ridden, and they spread their cloaks on it and on the road. Coming down the Mount of Olives the whole crowd of disciples starts shouting about the mighty works they have seen: blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven and glory in the highest. Some Pharisees tell him to make them stop, and he says the stones would do it instead. Then he sees the city and cries over it, describing a siege. He goes into the temple, drives out the sellers, and teaches there every day while the authorities look for a way to kill him.
Context Two things everyone pictures in this scene are not in this account, and both were counted. There are no palm branches: the word appears in this app only at John 12:13. And nobody says HOSANNA: the word is at Matthew 21:9 and 21:15, at Mark 11:9 and 11:10, and at John 12:13, and never in Luke. What the crowd shouts at verse 38 instead is a sentence the reader has already heard. At 2:14 the angels said glory to God in the highest and PEACE ON EARTH. Here it is PEACE IN HEAVEN and glory in the highest, with the two places swapped, and it holds in the French too, where Segond reads paix sur la terre at 2:14 and paix dans le ciel here. Twenty-eight verses later the city is told what is coming to it. The weeping at verse 41 has no parallel in the other three Gospels.