SKANDALON 1 (b) in the LXX

This metaphorical meaning seems to have given the word a new lease of life, and, shedding a syllable to make it fitter for the fight to survive in the linguistic jungle, it established a habitat for itself in the sense of a ‘trap’ or a ‘snare’ (the part, as so often, coming to stand for the whole), and it is in this sense that the translators of the Septuagint used it a number of times to mean an ‘inducement’ or ‘enticement’ to sin. But in some contexts in the LXX it is used in a rather different sense, of which Leviticus 19.14 gives the clearest example: “You shall not put a ‘skandalon’ in the way of a blind man”. Obviously, a blind man cannot be enticed by what he cannot see; ‘skandalon’ here has assumed its more familiar meaning – a ‘stumbling-block’. In this verse, of course, the stumbling-block is literal, but elsewhere, like the original meaning of ‘skandalon’, it is used metaphorically to refer to anything which makes us stumble and fall into sin as we walk along the strait and narrow road of righteousness.