Apparently, Jesus spent the night with Zacchaeus. He faced a fifteen-mile trip, up the mountains to Jerusalem. We don’t know what time he came through the city, but if healing Bartimaeus took a couple of hours and calling Zacchaeus would have taken a few more, there wasn’t time to make that trip on the same day. From a practical point, staying the night with Zacchaeus would give them a full day to travel to Jerusalem.

Again, when Jesus says that Zacchaeus is a son of Abraham, he may have been saying more than just a statement of his ancestry. Abraham was a father of the faithful, and Zacchaeus with his commitment, joined the progeny of faith.

After his approval of Zacchaeus’s commitment, he gives a parable to the group of onlookers, which makes it seem that this transpired on the road, but that’s not necessarily the case. When Jesus went home with Zacchaeus, a lot of the crowd would have followed and could have overheard him there.

It seems fitting that Jesus would give a parable about money while dealing with a tax collector. Clearly, this is a parable of the coming kingdom and judgment.