On Scandal and Amputation

A short keyword study on Matthew 18:6–9.

Text Under Discussion: Matthew 18:6–9 (NIV)

⁶ “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. ⁷ Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come! ⁸ If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. ⁹ And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.”

Key Word Exegesis

1.       Cause for stumbling (3x in v. 7); to cause to stumble (vv. 6, 8, 9): Although “to cause to stumble” translates the Gk. skandalizō  – a term that made its way into the LXX through its original literal connection to baited nooses or snares – its developed metaphorical NT meaning of to stumble, or fall away, on the path of righteousness (i.e. to sin) was “exclusively controlled by the thought and speech of the OT and Judaism.”¹ So, too, with the noun form skandalon, the “things (that cause people to stumble)”, that is, the stone(s) upon which one stumbles…. The most significant example of a skandalon is Jesus himself (“stone of offense,” Ro 9:32–33 ESV), that is, the false teaching against Jesus being the Messiah, the stumbling upon which is often expressed in our NTs as “being offended by, or in, him,” or “falling away because of him” (e.g., Mt 26:31, 33; 11:6; Lk 7:23; Mt 13:57; Mk 6:3).

2.       Woe (2x in v. 7): Used as a noun, the Gk. particle ouai means “a state of intense hardship or distress—‘disaster, horror.’”² When it is used as a threatening interjection upon a people or polity, as here, and Mt. 11:21, “the form is that of a prophetic lamentation. In the OT these are mostly directed to Gentile peoples … so the address to Jewish towns [and their inhabitants] is the more striking. … Woes are for those whose situation is miserable (whether they realise it or not).”³ In the entry on skandalon in the TDNT, Stählin notes that pronouncing “woe on the victim is rare (cf. only Mt. 24:19 and par.). The woe is usually on the one responsible, for in general it is an anticipation of damnation at the Last Judgment, cf. Lk. 6:24–26 etc.”⁴ The corporate object of the pronouncement here is “the world” (Gk. kosmos), a term Matthew is using synecdochally for the Jewish world (or eon) of Jesus’ day, given the immediate internal context of the passage, and the primary external context of the Gospel.⁵

3.       “Entering” and “being thrown into” (2x in vv. 8, 9): The juxtaposition of the contrary activities of “entering life” and “being thrown into the (eternal) fire of hell” (vv. 8, 9) maintains the underlying eschatological judgment motif begun by the disciples’ question in verse 1. Unlike “fire” in verse 8, the adjective “eternal” (Gk. aiōnios) is not appended to “kingdom” (v. 2), or either occurrence of “life” (vv. 8, 9), but the clear inference from the repeated use of “enter in” (the single Gk. word eiserchomai) is that these are all referring to the same eternal life in the coming age,⁶ into which only those declared righteous at the general judgement of the nation of Israel will enter. As with the aorist active infinitive forms of eiserchomai, the repetition of the aorist passive infinitive “be thrown (into)” (Gk. ballō) is more than enough to confirm that the “eternal fire” of verse 8 is the same “fire of hell” of verse 9.⁷ “Hell” here is “Gehenna” (Gk. geenna), the transliteration of the Hb. gê hinnōm, which “the majority of translators and commentators understand [is a] reference to the place of final destruction”⁸ for the unrighteous dead (the metaphoric “lake of fire” at Rv 20:10, 14, 15), as opposed to Hades (Gk. hadēs), the temporary abode of the righteous and unrighteous dead (Lk. 16:23).⁹

Conclusion

The adjectival phrase “who believe in me” (v. 6) indicates that the specific “cause of stumbling” referred to in this passage is false doctrine disputing Jesus’ Messiahship that leads astray any genuinely innocent follower of his (cf. Mt 5:27–30). And while it is true that the primary target for rebuke here is the one who teaches these false doctrines (v. 6b), the sobering warning “to the [entire Jewish] world” (v. 7a) is that, on Judgement Day, God will condemn all who did not follow his Messiah, whether they are those “through whom [stumbling] comes” (v. 7c) or those who are “[caused] to stumble” (vv. 8a, 9a), because of some immoral desire within them that finds the lies of the false teachers irresistibly appealing (1 Jn 2:16). These sinful wants are the hands, feet, and eyes that Jesus’ is instructing his disciples to cut off, pluck out, and throw away (vv. 8, 9). When they are standing before the throne of God, and their false claims of having been duped are falling on deaf ears, it’ll be too late. Under the Law of Moses, every mentally competent adult is held responsible for his being led astray. As James says, “Each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (Jm 1:14 NIV).

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1. G. Stählin, “Σκάνδαλον, Σκανδαλίζω,” TDNT 7:344.

2. L&N, s.v. “Οὐαί.”

3. My emphasis. John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 467.

4. My emphasis. From footnote 50 in Stählin, “Σκάνδαλον, Σκανδαλίζω,” 7:347.

5. What I call the King of Contexts, that is, Covenant Eschatology. See my embedded YouTube video here.

6. As we have seen from our study on John 3:16, the NT phrase “eternal life” itself “comes from a Hebrew phrase, literally ‘life in the (coming) age’ … in which God would destroy the power of sin and evil in the world and set up his own rule of love and peace.” Barclay Moon Newman and Eugene Albert Nida, A Handbook on the Gospel of John, UBS Handbook Series (New York, NY: UBS, 1993), 88.

7. Incidentally, the imperatives in the phrase “throw it away” of both verses 8 & 9 – literally “cast it from you” in Gk. – are also forms of ballō.

8. My emphasis. Barclay Moon Newman and Philip C. Stine, A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew, UBS Handbook Series (New York, NY: UBS, 1992), 564.

9. For this view of Hades in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, see the home Bible study notes “3 Points on Hades.”