TO CAUSE TO STUMBLE, OFFEND — from skandalon, the trigger-stick of a trap, so: to set a snare for, to trip up. ⚠ John 6:61 has Jesus ask his own disciples, after the hardest sentence of the bread-of-life discourse, 'does this skandalizei you?' — not 'does this confuse you' but 'does this trip you.' The noun and verb run through the New Testament as a technical pair for the specific offense the cross and a suffering Messiah give (1 Corinthians 1:23, 'Christ crucified, to Jews a skandalon'), and Paul uses the same verb of anything that might trip up a weaker believer's conscience (Romans 14:21; 1 Corinthians 8:13). Here it names precisely why many disciples leave in the next verse: not that the teaching was unclear, but that it was a stone in the road they chose not to step around. → first discussed at John 6:61