a stumbling block: anything that trips a person up, whether a literal obstacle in the path, the cause or occasion that makes someone fall, or the fall itself
This word names anything that trips a person up. It begins as a plain physical picture, a rock or obstacle left in someone's path (Leviticus 19:14), and Hebrew writers keep that concrete image alive even as they use it for far larger things. The same word can point to three things at once: the object you trip over, the cause or occasion that makes you fall, and the fall itself.
Because of that flexibility it slides easily from the literal to the moral and spiritual:
- a physical obstacle lying in a road
- a misfortune, temptation, or judgment that brings a person or a nation down
- an inner instability, a "stumbling of the heart" that would haunt a future king (1 Samuel 25:31)
- the collapse or downfall itself
The prophet Ezekiel gives the word its heaviest use. He pairs it with the word for guilt to coin a fixed phrase, a "stumbling block of iniquity," that no other biblical writer uses. In his mouth it names an idolatrous loyalty a person sets up inwardly, the very thing that disqualifies a worshiper and drags the whole covenant into ruin. Scholars still debate whether the phrase points to the idol itself, to the sin it produces, or to the downfall that results.
It sits close to two other Hebrew words: a snare or lure (מוֹקֵשׁ) that actively catches its prey, and a related noun for ruin (מַכְשֵׁלָה) from the same root that leans toward a collapsed heap. Its Greek afterlife is famous. The ancient translators most often reached for σκάνδαλον (skandalon), the trigger of a trap, and sometimes for πρόσκομμα (proskomma), a plain obstacle, and it was the first of these that Paul turned into the "scandal" of the cross.
Nuances
How to read God's placing of a stumbling block before the apostate righteous in Ezekiel 3:20 (and the parallel at 18:30), and therefore what the stumbling block denotes there: the occasion that causes the fall, or the resulting downfall itself.
- contestedA hardening or testing act: God actively places the occasion of falling, comparable to the deceiving of the prophet in Ezekiel 14:9.; W. Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1979), on 3:20; P. M. Joyce, Ezekiel: A Commentary, LHBOTS 482 (T&T Clark, 2007)
- contestedA judicial ratification: God confirms the direction the wayward person has already chosen, so that divine justice is preserved.; D. I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 1-24, NICOT (Eerdmans, 1997), 262-64
- contestedA broad occasion of downfall rather than a specific divinely set trap; at 18:30 the phrase names the resulting downfall or punishment more than a causal idol.; M. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20, AB 22 (Doubleday, 1983), 247-51
Whether the plural form in Ezekiel 21:15 is the noun "stumbling blocks" or "downfalls," or should be emended to a passive participle meaning "the overthrown ones."
- majorityEmend to a passive participle, "the overthrown ones," those made to stumble, following Cornill.; C. H. Cornill, Das Buch des Propheten Ezechiel (Hinrichs, 1886); W. Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1979); HALOT, s.v. מִכְשׁוֹל
- minorityRetain the received plural noun, "stumblings" or "occasions of falling."; DCH, vol. 5, s.v. מכשול