Woe (Good News Translation “How terrible”): see comment at 11.21.

The world here speaks of “the people of the world” as opposed to “God’s people.”

The noun translated temptations to sin (literally “stumbling blocks,” or better, “traps”) in its initial occurrence, and temptations in its other two occurrences in this verse, is discussed in 13.41, and the corresponding verb in 5.29 and 18.6.

Sin often needs a subject, in this case, the people of the world. Barclay has restructured in a helpful way: “The tragedy of the world is the existence of the things which make men sin.” Similar translations are “How terrible it is that there are things in the world that make people sin” and “The terrible thing about the world is that there are things that lead people to sin.”

For it is necessary that temptations come can be rendered as “It is inevitable that there will be things that cause people to sin,” “Things that make people give up their faith are always going to happen,” “We cannot avoid having things happen that could cause us to sin,” or “Things that can cause us to sin must happen.”

By whom the temptation comes is translated “for the one who causes them” by Good News Translation and “for the one who is guilty of it” by Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, 1st edition. Barclay translates the last part of the verse “but tragic is the fate of the man who is responsible for the coming of such a thing!”

The phrase the man by whom is not referring to one specific individual, but means “any person who causes someone else to do wrong.” “But how terrible it will be for someone who is the cause of another sinning” will be one way to render the idea of this sentence. The verse can be “There are bound to be things that make people sin, but the person who is responsible for those things has a terrible fate in store.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1988. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .