a stumbling block: the trap, obstacle, or offense that causes a person to fall into sin or turn away from God.
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
The word began as a piece of hardware. It named the baited trigger inside an animal trap, the little stick that holds the lure and springs the snare shut the moment it is touched. From there it came to mean anything that catches a person and brings them down, and in the Bible that fall is almost always a spiritual one: something set in a person's path that trips their footing with God.
As a noun it names the thing (or the person) that causes the fall, and it does so across a few related shades:
a temptation that entices someone into wrongdoing, the kind of trap Jesus warns is bound to appear
an obstacle deliberately laid in another's way, which Paul refuses to put in a fellow believer's path
an offense so sharp that people recoil from it, above all a crucified Messiah whom many could not accept
Paul's boldest use turns the word on the gospel itself. A crucified Messiah was an offense that many could not get past, and Paul does not try to smooth it away: the offense is not a misunderstanding to be cleared up but the very heart of the message. The related verb (σκανδαλίζω) describes the act of tripping a person up; this noun names the thing that trips them.
Nuances
1aa temptation to sin: something that entices or trips a person into wrongdoing, or that one person sets in another's path to the same effect.
Mat 13:41*Mat 16:23*Mat 18:7 (3×)*Luk 17:1Rom 14:13Rom 16:171Jn 2:10*Rev 2:14*
1Jn 2:10
The referent of the pronoun in 1 John 2:10: whether the σκάνδαλον is absent from the loving believer as a cause of others' stumbling or as a cause of the believer's own stumbling.
minorityThere is no cause of stumbling in the loving believer that would trip up other people, parallel to the Pauline weaker-brother passages.; B. F. Westcott, The Epistles of St John; Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Johannine Epistles (HTKNT)
majorityThere is nothing in the loving believer to cause the believer's own stumbling, an inner absence of any trap, supported by verse 11's picture of the one who hates walking blindly in the dark.; Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John (Anchor Bible); I. Howard Marshall, The Epistles of John (NICNT); Stephen S. Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John (WBC)
1ba cause of offense: the stumbling block that provokes people to reject it and turn away, above all Christ crucified.
Rom 9:33*1Co 1:23Gal 5:11*1Pe 2:8*
Rom 9:33
What the σκάνδαλον consists of in the stone testimony of Romans 9:33 (and the parallel citation in 1 Peter 2:8): the person of Christ, the principle of righteousness by faith rather than works, or the wider gospel event including the inclusion of Gentiles.
majorityThe stone is Christ himself, and the stumbling is over a right standing offered through faith rather than earned by works of the law.; C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans (ICC); Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT); Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans (BECNT)
minorityThe stumbling is chiefly over the law-versus-works question rather than the cross as such.; James D. G. Dunn, Romans (WBC)
minorityThe offense is the whole gospel event, especially the welcome of Gentiles, which overturns national and ethnic expectation.; N. T. Wright, The Letter to the Romans (New Interpreter's Bible)
1ca snare that springs in judgment: a trap that catches the unheeding and brings ruin.
names a snare that brings real spiritual ruin, the kind that can wreck a person's faith1Co 1:23Gal 5:11
Both
both can name what makes a person take exception and pull backGal 5:11
Only offense
modern English "offense" has shrunk to mean hurt feelings or a breach of manners, far milder than the Greek
“cause of sin”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“hindrance”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“snare”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How skandalon differs from similar Greek words
πρόσκομμαa stumbling block or obstacle you strike against; often paired with this word, but it leans toward the passive thing tripped over rather than the baited trap that means to catch.
Originally the baited trigger-stick of a trap, so it names a snare deliberately set to catch and bring someone down: Balaam "cast a stumbling block" to lure Israel into sin, and an enemy's table is made a trap.Rev 2:14Rom 11:9
Ranges over any active cause of sin, the things and people that entice others to fall, which the angels will gather out of the kingdom at the judgment.Mat 13:41Mat 18:7Rom 16:17
Names the offense that trips faith itself: the crucified Christ is a "stumbling block" to those who reject him, and to preach him plainly removes that scandal at cost.1Co 1:23Gal 5:11
Both
Paired in the same Scripture testimony that calls Christ a "stone of stumbling and a rock of offense," the two words standing side by side for the one obstacle people meet in him.Rom 9:331Pe 2:8
Both name the obstacle a believer must not lay in a fellow Christian's way, set together in a single command against tripping up a weaker brother.Rom 14:13
Names the obstruction itself, the thing lying in the path that a person strikes against, so the harm falls on the one who trips: eating meat "to offense" injures the eater's own conscience.Rom 14:201Co 8:9
Israel "struck against" the stone in unbelief, the obstacle staying passive while the fault lies wholly with those who stumble over it.Rom 9:32
παγίςa hunter's snare or trap; it names the mechanism that catches prey and stands right beside this word in Paul's quotation of the psalm.
Names the trap's trigger, the obstacle or offense that trips a person into stumbling and falling, so the emphasis is the fall itself rather than being held captive.Mat 18:7Rom 14:13
Is used mostly of a moral or spiritual offense that causes people to stumble in faith, including the cross of Christ that trips those who reject it.1Co 1:23Gal 5:111Pe 2:8
Both
Both are hunting and trapping images for what brings a person to ruin, and the two stand side by side in the Psalm 69 quotation, where the enemies' table becomes a snare and a trap.Rom 11:9
Names the hunter's snare or net itself, the device that springs shut and holds its prey fast, so the danger is capture from which there is no escape.Luk 21:352Ti 2:26
Pictures a person falling into a hidden trap and being caught in it, the ruin closing over someone who did not see it coming.1Ti 3:71Ti 6:9
σκανδαλίζωthe verb: to cause someone to stumble into sin or fall away from faith, or to be caused to stumble oneself.
skandalon in the other biblical languages
מוֹקֵשׁHebrew“snare”the active lure or bait-trap of a hunter, the Hebrew word the Greek noun most often renders when it means an enticement that catches.
Names the offense that trips a person into sin or makes them fall away, the moral obstacle set in someone's path.Mat 18:7Rom 14:131Jn 2:10
Points above all to Christ and his cross as the thing people trip over in unbelief, the offense that decides faith.Rom 9:331Co 1:231Pe 2:8
Can label a person as an obstacle who works against God's purpose, as when Jesus calls Peter a hindrance to him.Mat 16:23
Both
Both name a hidden trap that brings its victim down, and the Greek word is the one the New Testament uses to render the Hebrew: Paul quotes the psalm's curse that a table "become a snare" and turns it into a stumbling block.Psa 69:22Rom 11:9
Both can be deliberately set in another person's way to bring them down, a danger laid where the innocent will meet it.Psa 140:5Psa 141:9Rom 14:13
names an active enticement that traps a person into sin or into falling away, not merely a thing in the road: the causes of sin that will be gathered out of the kingdom, the snares Balaam taught to lure Israel into idolatry and immorality.Mat 13:41Mat 18:7Rev 2:14
can be a person who pulls someone away from God's will: Jesus calls Peter this when Peter tries to steer him off the road to the cross.Mat 16:23
names the scandal of the gospel itself, the crucified Messiah who trips people up and makes them recoil rather than believe.1Co 1:23Gal 5:11
is something a believer is charged never to set in a fellow Christian's path, so that love removes it rather than causing a weaker brother to fall.Rom 14:131Jn 2:10
Both
both name the stumbling block that trips a person up, and the Greek word is the standard New Testament rendering of the Hebrew one: the two meet in the single prophecy of the stone of stumbling and rock of offence, quoted from the Hebrew of Isaiah into the Greek of the apostles.Isa 8:14Rom 9:331Pe 2:8
both can be laid deliberately, by God or his agent, as an obstacle set in a people's path so that they stumble under judgment.Jer 6:21Ezk 3:20Rom 11:9
is most concretely a physical obstacle laid in someone's way that they trip over, such as the stone put before a blind man, which the law forbids and the prophet commands cleared from the road.Lev 19:14Isa 57:14
names the stumbling block of a people's iniquity, above all their idols, which becomes the guilt that brings them down.Ezk 7:19Ezk 14:3Ezk 44:12
can be an inward pang, a stumbling of the heart or conscience, rather than any outward object: the remorse David is spared, the offense that never overtakes those who love God's law.1Sa 25:31Psa 119:165
What scholars say about skandalon
σκάνδαλον is a Septuagintal creation: an obscure mechanical noun (the trap-trigger, related to σκανδάληθρον) with almost no theological life in classical or Hellenistic Greek, which the LXX promoted into a religious term by using it to render both מוֹקֵשׁ, the active bait-trap of a fowler, and מִכְשׁוֹל, the passive obstacle one strikes against. Stählin (Skandalon, 1930; TDNT 7:339-358) and Spicq (TLNT) argue that this conflation loaded the single Greek noun with both the active connotation of a deadly enticement and the passive connotation of an obstacle, and both resist any weakening to mere social offense. BDAG and Louw-Nida (splitting the field across artifacts, attitudes, and moral qualities) allow a milder register in some passages while preserving the dominant religious sense; EDNT (Giesen) follows Stählin. The stone testimony applied to Christ in Romans 9:33 and 1 Peter 2:8 conflates Isaiah 8:14 with 28:16 and matches Aquila's revision (λίθος προσκόμματος καὶ πέτρα σκανδάλου) rather than the Old Greek, which lacks the term at Isaiah 8:14, suggesting a pre-Christian Jewish revision or an early Christian stone-testimonia tradition. In 1 Corinthians 1:23 and Galatians 5:11 Paul makes the crucified Messiah the σκάνδαλον objectively rather than as subjective prickliness, anchored in Deuteronomy 21:23 (cf. Galatians 3:13). Commentators divide over the referent of the stumbling in Romans 9:33 (Cranfield, Moo, Schreiner: Christ and righteousness by faith; Dunn: the law-works axis; Wright: the whole gospel event) and over the ambiguous pronoun in 1 John 2:10 (Westcott, Schnackenburg vs. Brown, Marshall, Smalley). René Girard's mimetic reading (Things Hidden; I See Satan Fall) treats σκάνδαλον as the model-obstacle of rivalry and defends the older rendering "stumbling block" against modern euphemism.
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. σκάνδαλονlexicon
Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the NT Based on Semantic Domains, 6.25; 88.307-309lexicon
Gustav Stählin, "σκάνδαλον, σκανδαλίζω," TDNT 7:339-358dictionary