The Stone Which the Builders Rejected: The Psalm of the Corner Stone and the Rejected Son
Old Testament: Psalms 117:22-24
The stone which the builders rejected; the same is become the head of the corner. This is the Lord's doing: and it is wonderful in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made: let us be glad and rejoice therein.
Old Testament, also: Isaias 28:16
Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will lay a stone in the foundations of Sion, a tried stone, a corner stone, a precious stone, founded in the foundation. He that believeth, let him not hasten.
New Testament: Matthew 21:42-44; Acts 4:11-12; 1 Peter 2:4-7
Jesus saith to them: Have you never read in the Scriptures: The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner? By the Lord this has been done; and it is wonderful in our eyes. Therefore I say to you, that the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and shall be given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone, shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it shall grind him to powder. ... This is the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other. ... Unto whom coming, as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen and made honourable by God: Be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house ... Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious.
The connection
The psalm was sung by pilgrims going up to the Temple. In one line it tells of a stone the builders looked at, judged useless, and threw aside, which God then set at the corner, where two walls meet and the whole building holds: "This is the Lord's doing: and it is wonderful in our eyes" (Psalms 117:22-23). Jesus quotes that line about Himself. At the end of the parable of the vineyard, where the husbandmen cast the son out and kill him, He asks the chief priests, "Have you never read in the Scriptures: The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner?" (Matthew 21:42). The builders are the men in front of Him, whose office was to build up Israel. Days later they reject Him in fact. Then Peter, standing before those same rulers, points at the psalm again: "This is the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head of the corner" (Acts 4:11), and in his epistle he joins it to Isaias, who had promised a corner stone laid in Sion, and calls the faithful "living stones" built into that house (1 Peter 2:4-7). The Fathers say why it is a corner and not simply a foundation. St Augustine: "a corner joins two walls which come from different sides together. And what was so different as the circumcision and uncircumcision, having one wall from Judaea, the other from the Gentiles? But they are joined together by the corner stone." St Cyprian had already gathered the same two texts, Isaias and "the cxviith Psalm", as testimonies of Christ. The Catechism quotes the figure as the Church's own: "The Lord compared himself to the stone which the builders rejected, but which was made into the corner-stone. On this foundation the Church is built by the apostles" (CCC 756).
Moral sense
The builders were not fools or amateurs. They were the men who knew the trade, and the stone did not fit the wall they had in mind, so out it went. That is how most people reject Christ: not by hating Him, but by finding that He does not fit the life they are building. The warning in the Gospel is exact. The stone is not removed because it was refused; it is set at the corner, and after that everything is measured against it. "Whosoever shall fall on this stone, shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it shall grind him to powder." Falling on it and being broken is the better of the two, and it is what repentance feels like. And if He is the corner, then every wall we build apart from Him is out of true, however carefully laid.
Anagogical sense
A corner stone is laid once and holds for ever. What Peter builds on it is a house still going up: "Be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood" (1 Peter 2:5). The stone rejected in Jerusalem becomes the measure of the city that comes down out of heaven, whose wall has twelve foundations and no temple in it, because the Lord God is its temple. The psalm's next line is sung at Easter: "This is the day which the Lord hath made: let us be glad and rejoice therein." The day the builders threw the stone away is the day God made it the head of the corner, and that reversal is the whole hope of the resurrection.
The Fathers
St Augustine, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament, on Matthew 20: "For a corner joins two walls which come from different sides together. And what was so different as the circumcision and uncircumcision, having one wall from Judaea, the other from the Gentiles? But they are joined together by the corner stone." St Cyprian, Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews: "Also in the cxviith Psalm: The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner."
Warrant
Scriptural because Christ quotes Psalms 117:22 of Himself (Matthew 21:42), Peter quotes it before the same rulers (Acts 4:11), and 1 Peter 2:6-7 joins it to Isaias 28:16. The Greek is the same, word for word: the Septuagint of Psalms 117:22 has lithon hon apedokimasan hoi oikodomountes, houtos egenethe eis kephalen gonias, and Matthew 21:42 has exactly that line, as does 1 Peter 2:7 except for lithos in place of lithon. Acts 4:11 keeps the sense while changing the verb, exouthenetheis, set at nought, for apedokimasan, rejected after testing. The reading of the corner as the joining of Jews and Gentiles is St Augustine's, not the psalm's own claim, and the Catechism gives the corner stone itself, though not that reading, at CCC 756. Isaias 28:16 is a second stone text, not the one Christ quotes; it is kept beside the psalm because Peter puts them together.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 756.
The verses
Psalms 117:22 · Psalms 117:23 · Psalms 117:24 · Isaias 28:16 · Matthew 21:42 · Matthew 21:43 · Matthew 21:44 · Acts 4:11 · Acts 4:12 · 1 Peter 2:4 · 1 Peter 2:5 · 1 Peter 2:6 · 1 Peter 2:7
