In Luke 19, we find the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus, the tax collector. This is one of those stories that many of us learned as children. Zacchaeus is a short man who wants to see Jesus, and so climbs a tree. Jesus sees him, calls to him, has dinner with the little reprobate, and Zacchaeus turns his life around.

But we are making an assumption in how we read the text and tell the story—an assumption that has no backing in the text. The language in Luke 19:3 is ambiguous and does not tell us who is referred to as short. It could have been Zacchaeus or Jesus. I think it’s really interesting and quite telling that people have traditionally understood the text to imply that Zacchaeus was short.

I’m inviting you to consider why that might be the case and whether interpreting the text to mean that Jesus was short makes any difference.

What Does the Bible Say?

Luke 19:3 says:

He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.

The final ‘he’ is floating and ambiguous. There is no Greek tag to connect it to a subject in the sentence. It could be Zacchaeus or Jesus. The choice to regard Zacchaeus as short rather than Jesus says a lot about our assumptions about physical form, significance, and the person of Jesus.

There are almost no references to Jesus’ looks or physical description in the Gospels. This is in contrast to biographies in late antiquity, where a lot of ink was given to describing the physical characteristics of their subjects. Some have suggested that this was an intentional characteristic of the Gospel to guard against idolatry in line with the Ten Commandments. However, there are some descriptions of Jesus in the Gospels and in Acts, such as his scarred hands and wounded side, so this does not entirely hold together.

But regardless of the reason why there are very few descriptions of Jesus’ physical form, the fact that there are so few contributes to the confusion of this piece of text. Maybe the lack of physics descriptions of Jesus is one of the reasons why we assume the text is referring to Zacchaeus? But perhaps there is something else going on.

Assumptions of Moral Qualities to Height

Perhaps people subconsciously think tall people are better, more glorious, and more important than short people. Perhaps it’s because Zacchaeus, as a liar and a cheat, is an unlikeable character and is more likely to be thought of as short.

Perhaps it’s because people liked to laugh at the image of a short person having to climb into a tree to see over the crowd. Perhaps people want to think of Zacchaeus as short and Jesus as tall because it fits assumptions about the quality of height in relation to the moral quality of Jesus and Zacchaeus.

But what if the opposite assumption was true for Luke? What if Luke portrayed Jesus as short because some kind of positive characteristic was attached to shortness in the ancient world?

Classical Assumptions of Height

Several significant characters in ancient history and late antiquity were understood to be short. Being tall was not always conceived of as better or more ‘manly’ than being short. One example is the philosopher Socrates, the tutor of Plato, whose death was similar to Jesus. Some scholars have suggested that Luke, who it is generally agreed had at least some classical education, intentionally linked the death of Jesus to the death of Socrates, although I don’t think that’s a particularly strong argument.

Another example is Aesop, famous for his fables, who was also thought to be short. Luke has Jesus quote Aesop in Luke 24:25, and Jesus teaches in parables in much the same way that Aesop did.

There are definitely more similarities with Aesop than Socrates. But regardless of whether or not Jesus was like Aesop, the point is that a short person in late antiquity was potentially being linked to philosophers and teachers rather than modern assumptions about physical presence and masculinity.

Maybe Luke is intentionally presenting Jesus as short to try and explain about who Jesus was.

Or, perhaps, it has nothing to do with any of this, and the verse simply explains why Zacchaeus had to climb a tree and so was seen by Jesus. But it does perhaps highlight how our assumptions about physical appearance impact our interpretation of a text that has no evidence in the text itself. We need to be aware of our biases and assumptions when reading the Bible so that we don’t make the mistake of reading what isn’t there into the text.

Was Jesus short? Possibly. Does it matter that we assume it was Zacchaeus who was short? Yes!

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