to trip someone up: to make a person stumble in their faith, whether by leading them into sin, driving them to give up, or setting off a reaction of offense.
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
The picture behind this word is a trap. It comes from a noun that named the baited trigger of a snare, the little stick an animal knocks against so the trap springs shut. So the verb is never about a harmless stumble over a rock in the road. It is about something that catches a person and brings them down spiritually: a hindrance thrown in their path, an obstacle that trips their footing with God.
Because the same trap can catch a person in different ways, the word covers a small family of related outcomes rather than several unrelated ideas. Someone can spring the trap on another person, causing them to sin or to abandon their faith. A person can be caught by the trap themselves, giving up and falling away when trouble or pressure comes. Or the trap can be a person or a claim that so offends someone that they recoil from it, as many recoiled from Jesus. In every case the core is the same: a stumbling that damages the person's standing before God, which is why the older English word for it was to be offended and the modern one is to be scandalized.
Jesus uses it with great seriousness. Whatever trips you up, he says, cut it off; and woe to anyone who trips up one of these little ones. The word carries a warning that runs in both directions, against being tripped and against tripping others.
Nuances
1ato lead someone into sin or turn them away from God; to be the trap that brings another person down.
1cto take offense at someone, to be repelled or scandalized; to recoil from a person or claim rather than accept it.
Mat 11:6Mat 13:57Mat 15:12*Mrk 6:3Luk 7:23
1dto give offense, to cause affront; to be the source of a stumble that would needlessly put others off.
CertaintyContested
Mat 17:27*
Mat 17:27
Whether the verb in Matthew 17:27 (and the comparable Matthew 15:12) genuinely weakens to the milder social sense "give offense," or retains the stronger religious sense of causing a fall from faith that it carries elsewhere in the New Testament.
majorityThe word here means simply "give offense": Jesus pays the tax to avoid needlessly affronting the collectors, who believe they are serving God, not to keep anyone from sinning or falling away. This is the single clearest New Testament case of the weaker register.; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Matthew (ICC) 2:746; R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT); BDAG, s.v. σκανδαλίζω
minorityEven here the verb keeps the religious-eschatological weight it inherited from Septuagint usage, so the offense in view is never merely social; the word group is a theological term of art throughout the New Testament.; Gustav Stählin, "σκάνδαλον, σκανδαλίζω," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) 7:339-358; Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. σκάνδαλον
the stumble here is caused by a trap and results in real spiritual harm, sin or falling away, not a mere loss of footingMat 13:21Mrk 4:17
Both
both picture a person losing their footing along a pathRom 14:21
Only stumble
plain English stumble suggests an accidental trip that a person recovers from, missing the deliberate snare and the lasting damage in view here
“fall away”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“cause to sin”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How skandalizō differs from similar Greek words
προσκόπτωto strike the foot against an obstacle and stumble; names the physical act of tripping, where this word names being trapped or brought down in faith.
Means to trip someone morally or spiritually: to be the reason a person falls into sin or abandons their faith.Mat 18:6Mrk 9:421Co 8:13
Describes people being tripped up by Jesus himself: taking offense at him and turning away rather than believing.Mat 11:6Mat 13:57Jhn 6:61
Used vividly for cutting off whatever causes the fall, as when a hand or eye becomes the thing that trips you into sin.Mat 5:29Mat 5:30Mrk 9:47
Both
Both can name an action of one person that makes another fall, so a believer is warned not to be the cause of a fellow believer's downfall.Rom 14:21Mat 18:6
Names a literal, physical knock: a foot striking a stone, a wall collapsing against a house, a traveler bumping something in the dark.Mat 4:6Mat 7:27Jhn 11:9
Pictures the object of offense as a stone lying in the path that people trip over, an image drawn from Isaiah about God himself.Rom 9:321Pe 2:8
πταίωto stumble or slip up, often meaning to fail morally in general; this word is more pointed, a trap that specifically leads to sin, apostasy, or offense.
Points at the thing that trips someone up, or at the person tripped by it. The action is caused from outside: an eye, a hand, another believer, or a hard teaching becomes the snare that makes a person fall.Mat 5:29Mat 18:6
The fall is usually moral and often decisive: falling away from faith, being led into sin, or abandoning Jesus under pressure. It is the failure a stronger believer must take care never to trigger in a weaker one.Mat 13:211Co 8:13Rom 14:21
Names the misstep itself: to trip, slip, or fail, without any second party pushing you. The subject simply falters, whether in conduct, in speech, or in a single point of the law.Jas 2:10Jas 3:2
Carries a hopeful shading of a stumble that need not become a fall. Paul asks whether Israel tripped only to collapse for good, and Peter promises that a certain kind of life keeps you from ever slipping.Rom 11:112Pe 1:10
σκάνδαλονthe noun: the trap or stumbling block itself, the thing (or person) that causes the fall, including Christ crucified described as a stumbling block to Israel.
skandalizō in the other biblical languages
מִכְשׁוֹלHebrew“stumbling”the Hebrew noun for a stumbling-block, the obstacle in the path that trips a person up; this Greek verb is the act of tripping someone that such an obstacle produces.
It is a verb, naming the action itself: to trip someone into sin or to be tripped. Jesus uses it for a hand or eye that leads a person into sin, telling them to cut it off rather than let it drag the whole self down.Mat 5:29Mat 18:6
It reaches inside a person to name a reaction: to take offense, to be repelled, to fall away. The crowds are tripped up by Jesus himself, and the disciples are warned they will all be made to stumble and desert him on the night he is arrested.Mat 11:6Mat 13:57Mat 26:31
It drives the ethic of not harming a weaker believer: refusing food or drink so as not to make a fellow Christian fall, so the danger is a thing one person does to another rather than a fixed object in the road.Rom 14:211Co 8:13
Both
Both draw on the same picture of stumbling in the road: one names the act of tripping or being tripped, the other the object that does the tripping, so together they cover the deed and the thing that causes it. Each moves from a literal fall to a moral one, where the person is brought down into sin or ruin.Mat 18:6Ezk 14:3
It is a noun, naming the obstacle itself, the thing lying in the path that a person trips over. The law forbids putting such a block before the blind, and a leader who thinks ahead spares himself a snare and a self-reproach.Lev 19:141Sa 25:31
In Ezekiel it becomes a settled term for idols as the fixed thing that trips people into guilt: people set up their idols as the very block that makes them fall, so it names a standing object of ruin rather than a momentary act.Ezk 14:3Ezk 14:7Ezk 7:19
מוֹקֵשׁHebrew“snare”the Hebrew noun for a fowler's snare or bait-trap, the active lure that catches and ruins; this Greek verb inherits exactly that trap image, the deliberate springing of a snare rather than an accidental slip.
What scholars say about skandalizō
The verb is denominative from σκάνδαλον, the trigger or bait-stick of a trap, a late Koine and largely biblical or Jewish-Greek development; the ordinary classical stumbling-block term is πρόσκομμα. Its distribution is almost entirely biblical: it is unattested in classical Greek and barely present in the Septuagint proper, entering the New Testament from Jewish-Greek usage that had already loaded the word group with the active luring of מוֹקֵשׁ and the passive obstruction of מִכְשׁוֹל. The cleanest organizing distinction in the New Testament data is grammatical: active σκανδαλίζω with an object generally means to cause someone to fall into sin or apostasy (the one clear exception being Matthew 17:27); the passive with ἐν plus a person means to take offense at someone in a way that endangers faith; and the absolute passive functions almost as a technical term for falling away (Luke 8:13 replaces Mark's σκανδαλίζονται with ἀφίστανται, the standard verb for apostatizing). Standard lexica (BDAG, Louw-Nida) treat it as one verb with a related range rather than as homonyms, and Gustav Stählin's TDNT article reads σκάνδαλον and σκανδαλίζω together as a theological term for the offense that becomes an occasion of falling. Scholarship is therefore settled on what the word denotes; the live disagreement is over how finely to subdivide its uses and whether it ever weakens to a merely social "give offense."
In-depth research
This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. σκανδαλίζωlexicon
Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 25.179; 88.307-309lexicon
Gustav Stählin, "σκάνδαλον, σκανδαλίζω," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) 7:339-358dictionary
Heinz Giesen, "σκάνδαλον, σκανδαλίζω," in Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (EDNT) 3:248-250dictionary