1 Peter 2:7

Unto you therefore which believe he is precious ; rather, unto you therefore which believe is the honor . The apostle applies the last clause of the prophecy to his readers: they believe, they are built up by faith upon the chief Cornerstone; therefore the honor implied in the words of the prophet, "He that believeth on him shall not be confounded" is theirs. There may also be in the word τιμή , honor, an echo of the ἔντιμος ("precious," literally, "held in honor") of 1 Peter 2:6 ; and thus the further meaning may be implied, "The worth which the stone has it has for you who believe" (Wiesinger, quoted by Huther). But the first explanation is nearer to the Greek. But unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the Head of the corner ; rather, as in the Revised Version, for such as disbelieve . St. Peter repeats the words of the hundred and eighteenth psalm, quoted by our Lord in Matthew 21:42 , and by himself in Acts 4:11 . The builders, the priests and teachers of the Jewish Church, rejected the living Stone; but it became, and indeed through that rejection, the Head of the corner. "He became obedient unto death .. therefore God also highly exalted him." If this psalm is post-Exilic, as most modern critics think, the cornerstone, in its first application, may be Israel regarded as a whole. The great builders, the rulers of Assyria, Babylon, Persia, had despised that stone; but it was chosen of God, and now it was set in Zion. It is possible, as Hengstenberg and Delitzsch suggest, that the building of the second temple may have recalled to the mind of the psalmist Isaiah's prophecy of the chief Corner-stone.