What Does Luke 17:1 Mean in the King James?
Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come!
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
A stumbling block is also a snare, and the verse traces its harm through the person by whom it reaches someone else.
THE MEANING
Stumbling causes enter the life you move through; their presence is unavoidable. The warning still falls on the person through whom they reach others: the obstacle’s inevitability does not erase the weight of carrying it into someone else’s path.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The fact that stumbling is unavoidable does not make the person who brings it to another harmless or blameless.
THE ROOT
σκάνδαλα
skándala
GROWS FROM
σκανδαλ-
skandal-
A snare, trap trigger, or cause of stumbling.
“Offences” can sound like personal insults, while the Greek also carries the image of a snare or stumbling cause. Its word family names both the obstacle and the act of making someone stumble, revealing how a fall can reach another person through someone else.
ALSO GROWS
skándalon: A snare, stumbling block, or cause of ruin.
σκάνδαλον
This singular form makes the trap imagery in the verse’s “offences” visible.
skandalízō: To cause someone to stumble or be ensnared.
σκανδαλίζω
The verb shows the other side of the same root: not just the obstacle, but the act of bringing about another’s fall.
THE PATTERN
Stumbling obstacles may be present, but the person who places or carries them into another’s path remains accountable.
Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD.Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.THE THREAD
Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.The Greek behind “occasion to fall” is σκάνδαλον (skándalon), the same word translated “offences” in Luke. Romans places it beside a word for an obstacle, letting you see both images at once: the obstruction in the path and the snare that can bring someone down.
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