Psalms 118:21

THE REJECTED ONE HAS BECOME KING

"I will give thanks unto thee; for thou has answered me,

And art become my salvation.

The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.

This is Jehovah's doings;

It is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day which Jehovah hath made;

We will rejoice and be glad in it."

"I will give thanks unto thee" (Psalms 118:21). Notice the pronoun "I." It is the psalmist who speaks, and we believe that psalmist to have been David. Having been elevated to the throne, he is here in the Tabernacle to worship God with sacrifice, thanksgiving and praise.

"The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner" (Psalms 118:22). It is our conviction, as Jesus Christ himself said, that David spoke "In the Spirit of God": and we hold this sentence to have been a divinely-inspired prophecy. There is no recollection here of some Jewish proverb, or tradition; this is brand new prophecy of what will be in the future. The occasion for the remark was that David, rejected and hated by the Royal House of Israel, had now become the head of the nation; and David was inspired of God to phrase it in the terminology used here.

These marvelous words were fulfilled twice in the times subsequent to those of King David.

(1) They were fulfilled in the building of the temple, either that of Solomon, or the second temple, as Dummelow thought.[9] It makes no difference, for David wrote before either was built. That is what is so wonderful about this prophecy.

Dean Plumptre said, "The illustration seems to have been drawn from one of the stones, quarried, hewn, and marked, away from the site of the temple, which the builders, ignorant of the head architect's plans, had put to one side, as having no place in the building, but was found afterwards to be that on which the completeness of the structure depended, as the chief corner stone"![10]

(2) The second fulfillment and the Great One was in Jesus Christ who applied the words to himself.

Did ye never read the scriptures? The stone which the builders rejected, The same was made the head of the corner; This was from the Lord, And it is marvelous in our eyes (Matthew 21:42).

Besides the parallel accounts in the synoptic gospels, this figure of the "chief corner stone" is mentioned in Ephesians 2:20; Acts 4:11; and 1 Peter 2:4,7.

It appears to this writer as extremely improbable that Christ would have been referring in this passage to some accident like that mentioned by Plumptre (quoted above). He was referring to what the great Old Testament Type of Christ, King David, had written "in the scriptures." McCullough's fancy that Christ was here quoting what "may have been a proverb"[11] is flatly denied by the words of Christ himself. The analogy is that just as the rejected David had become King, so the rejected Christ would be the head of the Kingdom of God on earth.

In the analogy of Christ as the chief cornerstone: (1) law and grace; (2) God and man; (3) time and eternity; (4) B.C. and A.D.; (5) the Mosaic Dispensation and the Christian Dispensation; (6) the letter and the spirit; and (7) judgment and mercy, both begin and end in Christ, thus forming in a metaphor a true corner in Christ.

Some have objected to understanding this prophecy as Messianic, on the basis, "The psalmist here was saved from death, but Christ died." This is worthless as an objection. Of course, David did die, as did Christ; but both David and our Lord were the objects of many attempts to murder them. Herod tried to murder the child Jesus; the citizens of Nazareth tried to throw him off a cliff; and the Pharisees plotted to have him assassinated (Matthew 26:4).

"This is Jehovah's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes" (Psalms 118:23). It was God who brought David to the throne of Israel; and it was equally true that God Himself protected and blessed Jesus of Nazareth until his "time had come" to make the Great Atonement.

"This is the day which Jehovah hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it" (Psalms 118:24). What a glorious day it was for David. The hazardous fleeing day and night from the murderous intentions of Saul was over. He was king; his followers were rejoicing all over Israel. God had indeed made it a day of great rejoicing.

But there was a great day of rejoicing of which that was only a feeble symbol. That more glorious day is the Day of Redemption in Christ Jesus. It was the day when Christ was born, and heaven itself broke into songs of praise and rejoicing. It was the day when an angel of God said, "HE IS NOT HERE; HE IS RISEN"!