Today’s Passage: Psalm 118
This psalm begins where so much of the life of faith begins, with a call to give thanks, and then it tells us why: a man cried out in his distress, and the LORD answered him and set him free. The nations pressed in around him on every side, and still he was not overcome. Near the end he reaches for an image that would echo far past his own day. A stone the builders had looked over and thrown aside became the very cornerstone of the building. We should not soften that line into a comfortable saying about second chances. Jesus Himself read that rejected stone as a picture of Himself, and Peter stood before the builders and named Him plainly. The crowd’s cry of Hosanna on the road into Jerusalem was this psalm’s own words, lifted up over one particular man. So we will read Psalm 118 the way the Lord and His apostles read it.
As you read, hold this: The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
Context The last psalm of the Hallel
Psalms 113 through 118 belonged to Passover, sung together as one great act of praise, and Psalm 118 is where that set of songs comes to rest. It opens and closes with a single line meant to be taken up by more than one voice. Long after it was first written, a festival crowd would wave palm branches and cry out verse 25 aloud as Jesus came into the city. That first setting at the feast does not loosen in the least what the New Testament would later fasten to these words.
Psalm 118:1-4 (BSB)
¹ Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His loving devotion endures forever. ² Let Israel say, “His loving devotion endures forever.” ³ Let the house of Aaron say, “His loving devotion endures forever.” ⁴ Let those who fear the LORD say, “His loving devotion endures forever.”
One line, and four mouths to say it. Israel says it, then the house of Aaron, which is the priests, and then all who fear the LORD. The psalm does not change the words as it passes from one voice to the next. It is teaching a whole congregation to say one true thing together before it says anything else at all. His chesed, His loving devotion, endures forever. That is the ground the rest of the psalm will stand on.
Psalm 118:5-9 (BSB)
⁵ In my distress I called to the LORD, and He answered and set me free. ⁶ The LORD is on my side; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? ⁷ The LORD is on my side; He is my helper. Therefore I will look in triumph on those who hate me. ⁸ It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man. ⁹ It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes.
Now the many voices narrow down to a single “I.” There was distress, and a cry, and an answer, and then freedom. Twice over he says the same thing, that the LORD is on his side, and so he will not be afraid of anything a man can do to him. Taking refuge in the LORD, he has learned, is better than leaning on man, better even than trusting in princes. He drew that lesson out of a real rescue, and then he hands it on to the whole congregation as something they can lean their own weight upon too.
Psalm 118:10-14 (BSB)
¹⁰ All the nations surrounded me, but in the name of the LORD I cut them off. ¹¹ They surrounded me on every side, but in the name of the LORD I cut them off. ¹² They swarmed around me like bees, but they were extinguished like burning thorns; in the name of the LORD I cut them off. ¹³ I was pushed so hard I was falling, but the LORD helped me. ¹⁴ The LORD is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.
Three times he says it: in the name of the LORD I cut them off. The nations had him surrounded on every side. They swarmed around him like bees, and like burning thorns they flared up bright and were gone. The man who first sang this was remembering a real press of enemies, and the way the line keeps coming back is the very sound of a danger that would not stop returning. Verse 13 is honest about how near it came. He was pushed so hard that he was falling. And then verse 14 reaches back and takes up the oldest victory song Israel had.
"The LORD is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise Him, my father’s God, and I will exalt Him." Exodus 15:2 (BSB)
This new deliverance stands in that same long line, the one that runs all the way back to Moses and the LORD’s rescue at the sea.
Psalm 118:15-18 (BSB)
¹⁵ Shouts of joy and salvation resound in the tents of the righteous: “The right hand of the LORD performs with valor! ¹⁶ The right hand of the LORD is exalted! The right hand of the LORD performs with valor!” ¹⁷ I will not die, but I will live and proclaim what the LORD has done. ¹⁸ The LORD disciplined me severely, but He has not given me over to death.
You can hear the tents of the righteous ringing with the shout of it. Three times the singer names the right hand of the LORD, lifted high and doing valiantly. I will not die, he says, but I will live, and the life that is spared will not keep quiet; it will proclaim what the LORD has done. Verse 18 is honest with us. The discipline had been severe. Yet for all its severity, God had not handed him over to death. Notice that the psalm never names some secret crime lying behind the attack. The danger back in verses 10 through 13 reads plainly as enemies, not as a confession of guilt. Scripture can call a hard stretch of providence discipline without turning it into a hidden sin the singer never once admits. What he holds onto is the second half of the verse: not given over to death.
Psalm 118:19-21 (BSB)
¹⁹ Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter and give thanks to the LORD. ²⁰ This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through it. ²¹ I will give You thanks, for You have answered me, and You have become my salvation.
Open the gates, he asks, and let me come inside to give my thanks in person. This is the gate of the LORD, the one the righteous enter by, and he means to walk through it with his gratitude on his lips. You have answered me, he says to God, and You have become my salvation.
Word study "Cornerstone" — 'eben, rosh pinnah (Psalm 118:22)
Hebrew: אֶבֶן (’eben), “stone.” Strong’s H68. The builders מָאֲסוּ (ma’asu), they looked it over and rejected it. H3988. And yet that very stone is made לְרֹאשׁ פִּנָּה (le-rosh pinnah), “the head of the corner.” Rosh (H7218) is the head, and Pinnah (H6438) is the corner, the stone that sets the line every wall of the building must follow.
So the stone the builders threw away becomes the one every other stone is measured and squared against. And notice the order the Hebrew keeps: it sets the thrown-away stone first in the sentence and the place of honor last, so that the words themselves act out the very reversal they are describing.
Psalm 118:22-24 (BSB)
²² The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. ²³ This is from the LORD, and it is marvelous in our eyes. ²⁴ This is the day that the LORD has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
Study notes The Lord and the apostles name the stone
Jesus set this very verse before the builders who were standing in front of Him.
"Jesus said to them, 'Have you never read in the Scriptures: "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes"?'" Matthew 21:42 (BSB)
Peter said the same thing to that same council, now on the far side of the cross and the empty tomb.
"This Jesus is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’" Acts 4:11 (BSB)
And Peter wrote it down once more, this time to the scattered churches.
"To you who believe, then, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, 'The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.'" 1 Peter 2:7 (BSB)
That reading is settled, and we are not free to open it back up. This is not a vague word about how things tend to turn around in general. It is about this Jesus, about the builders who examined Him and found Him wanting, and about the stone God set in place in spite of them.
And verse 24, “this is the day that the LORD has made,” is that day: the day of this deliverance, the day the rejected stone was set at last in its place. To be glad for an ordinary morning is no crime, of course. It simply is not what the verse was first shouting about.
Psalm 118:25-27 (BSB)
²⁵ O LORD, save us, we pray. We beseech You, O LORD, cause us to prosper! ²⁶ Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD. From the house of the LORD we bless you. ²⁷ The LORD is God; He has made His light to shine upon us. Bind the festal sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar.
Behind verse 25 stand two Hebrew words, hoshia and na, meaning save, we pray. When the New Testament reached for this cry, it kept the very sound of it, and we say it still as Hosanna. The crowds lining the road into Jerusalem were not making up a new song; they were taking up this psalm’s own words.
"The crowds that went ahead of Him and those that followed were shouting: “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest!”" Matthew 21:9 (BSB)
Verse 26 was, to begin with, a blessing spoken over any worshiper coming up to the gate. But on that day the crowd spoke it over one particular worshiper, and the Lord did not turn the shout away. Then verse 27 comes back down into the house of God itself, to the light shining upon the people and a sacrifice bound with cords to the horns of the altar. However high these words soar, they come to rest in ordinary worship.
Psalm 118:28-29 (BSB)
²⁸ You are my God, and I will give You thanks. You are my God, and I will exalt You. ²⁹ Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His loving devotion endures forever.
You are my God. What the whole congregation had been singing together now becomes one man’s own claim, spoken straight to the LORD. And then the opening line comes around once more to close the psalm. Nothing new is added, and nothing needs to be. His loving devotion endures forever.
The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.