Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks. — Matthew 18:7.
Today’s verse caused me to do a little research. I couldn’t imagine that Jesus used the words “stumbling blocks.” Now, most translations substitute “temptations” for “stumbling blocks,” but I wondered in Matthew’s original Hebrew or early Greek what word was used and what it meant. My EFM training didn’t teach me to read Hebrew or Greek but we now have Google. Here is what I found:
Jesus’s warning, “Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks,” is far more potent than the common translation “temptations.” The word used in the original Greek of the New Testament is skandalon, which is the root of our word “scandal.”
Skandalon did not refer to sin itself, but to the mechanism that causes the fall. It literally meant: The bent stick or lever on a hunter’s snare that, when touched, snaps the trap shut and captures the animal or a stone placed in a path to trip someone.
When Jesus used this term, He wasn’t talking about abstract temptation; He was warning about being the trigger or obstacle that leads another person to spiritual ruin. But Jesus didn’t speak in Greek nor did Matthew write in Greek. More than likely they used the Hebrew word mikhshol.
In Leviticus 19:14, mikhshol literally meant a physical obstacle: “You shall not put a stumbling block (mikhshol) before the blind.” Over time, this concept evolved into a metaphor for anything that causes a moral or spiritual downfall, such as idolatry (Ezekiel 14:3).
While it is difficult enough to avoid falling over the traps placed by the world, Jesus’s warning carries an even greater challenge: ensuring that we are not the ones setting them. The most dangerous stumbling blocks are often set unintentionally, through the careless exercise of personal freedom or an unloving example.
The gravity of Matthew 18:7 shifts our focus from merely protecting our own spiritual path to radically guarding the path of every person around us—a call to self-sacrificial awareness and love.
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