1 Peter 2:8

1 Peter 2:8. and, A stone of stumbling and rook of offence. The second passage is taken from Isaiah 8:14, and is given according to the Hebrew, not according to the singularly divergent version of the LXX. What is said there of Jehovah of hosts, namely, that, while He is a sanctuary to those who sanctify Him, he will be a ‘Stone for sinking against, and a rock of stumbling' to the mass of the faithless people of both kingdoms, is here affirmed of Christ. The terms, too, denote not what the disbelieving feel Christ to be (so Luther, etc.), or the offence which they take at Him, but what He in point of fact must prove objectively to them. Compare Simeon's declaration of what the infant Saviour was destined to be (Luke 2:34-35). A difficulty has been felt by not a few interpreters with the positive form in which Christ is here said to have been made what these prophetic statements represent Jehovah as certain to be to particular classes. But Peter says nothing more here than what Paul affirms when he speaks of the same persons being a ‘savour of life unto life,' and a ‘savour of death unto death' (2 Corinthians 2:16), and nothing beyond what had been expressed still more strongly, indeed, and in terms of the same citation by his Lord Himself (Luke 20:17-18) the truth that God's grace is not a neutral gift, but becomes its opposite to its scorners. Special difficulty has been felt with the statement that Christ was made to the disbelieving head of the corner. It is proposed, therefore, to construe the sentence in an entirely novel way, namely, ‘He then who on the one hand is an Honour to the believing and to the disbelieving, on the other hand the Stone rejected of the builders, was made to the one class head of the corner, and to the other a stone of stumbling,' etc. (Hofmann). Others explain it on the principle that a stone which is not recognised by the eye becomes an obstacle for the feet to strike against (Gerhard, Steiger, etc.). But the point may simply be that the Divine demonstration of Christ as made the very thing which they refused to admit in Him, itself puts the disbelieving to the shame against which the believing are declared to be secured. ‘God thus poured into their own bosom the contempt which they had poured upon His Son' (Lillie).

who stumble, disobeying the word. This is not an independent sentence, whether it be construed as=‘They who stumble are disobedient,' etc., or as=‘These stumble,' etc., or (with Hofmann on the uncertain analogy of the use of the relative as an exclamation in Matthew 26:30) as=‘As for those who stumble... to what a fate were they appointed!' It continues the previous statement, and that, too, not as appending a reason for it (so apparently the R. V., ‘ for they stumble'), but in the simple form of an explanations= ‘that is to say, to those who stumble,' or, as the A. V. puts it, ‘even to them which stumble.' The Vulgate and the other English Versions, Wycliffe, Tyndale, Cranmer, the Geneva, the Rheims, as also the A. V. and the older commentators, such as Erasmus, Luther, etc., agree in making the ‘word' dependent on the ‘stumble.' Most now, however, following the Syriac, Bengel, etc., rightly connect the ‘word' with the ‘disobeying,' both because the ‘stumble' has been already sufficiently defined, and because the participle otherwise would be a pointless addition. The stumbling (again in the objective sense) and the disobedience are related to each other as simultaneous things, or as cause and effect. Christ is what He is declared to be to a certain class, when or because they disobey the Word. He is made a stone of stumbling only to those who, by rejecting that Word, in point of fact turn God's grace in Christ to their own hurt.

whereunto also they were appointed. A solemn expression of the truth that not only is it so, but it cannot be otherwise. The apparent severity of the statement has been so acutely felt, that a variety of expedients have been attempted with a view to change or mitigate it. Three classes of interpretations have to be noticed. There are those entirely unreasonable interpretations which refuse to see that Peter has God in view as the Author of the ‘appointment,' and add to the verb ‘were appointed' some such explanation as ‘by Jewish prejudice' (Hottinger), ‘by Satan' (Aretius), or ‘by Old Testament prophecy' (Mason). There are those, again, which endeavour to make the clause a single sentence with the preceding. This is the case with Erasmus, Luther, etc., and also with several of our older English Versions. Thus Tyndale gives ‘believe not that wherein they were set,' the Rhemish ‘neither do believe wherein also they are put,' and so substantially ‘also Wycliffe and Cranmer. But the Genevan has ‘unto the which thing also they were ordained.' There are also those (and this third class embraces the great majority) which recognise a distinct assertion of a Divine ordinance. This is undoubtedly the only valid exegesis. It is impossible to adjust the terms to any less positive idea. The opening words cannot be softened into ‘on account of which,' but denote the destiny or end which is set for the disobedient. The verb means here, as repeatedly elsewhere, ordain, constitute, appoint, and the ‘also' has its ascensive force, indicating that there is something deeper even than observed fact to be said upon the subject. The precise thing to which the disobedient are said to be ordained, however, is differently conceived. Some construe the sentence as = to which disobedience also they were appointed (Calvin preferentially, Beza, etc.); some as = to which stumbling, etc. (Grotius, Bengel, Steiger, Huther, Weiss, etc.); and some, again, as = to which disobedience and stumbling, etc. (de Wette, Wiesinger, Leighton, Hofmann, Lillie, etc.). Of these three constructions the second is the simplest and most contextual. For the main subject of the section has been neither the genesis of faith and unbelief, nor their moral merit and demerit, but the positive honour which is destined for the believer, and the positive shame or stumbling which is destined for the unbeliever. It is to be observed, too, that the verb introduced here is not the term which bears the technical sense of foreordaining, but one which (with a single doubtful exception in 1 Thessalonians 5:9) is always used in the New Testament of things done in time (cf. John 15:16; Acts 20:28; 1 Timothy 2:7; 2 Timothy 1:11). There is, therefore, no affirmation here of a predestination of some to unbelief. Whatever ordination is asserted, is, as Wetstein briefly puts it, an ordination ‘not that they shall sin, but that, if sinning, they shall be punished.' Just as it is said in 1 Peter 2:6, ‘Behold, I lay (or, set) in Zion a chief corner-stone,' so it is said here (for the verbs are the same) that they ‘were appointed (or, set) .' In the one case it is what God has actually done in making Christ what He is to the Church; in the other it is what He has done in so relating disobedience and stumbling that the latter is the result of the former. The historical relation established between these two things has its ground in the eternal purpose of God, and the New Testament does not shrink from carrying back (and in the least qualified terms, cf. Romans 9:21, etc.) the gravest moral facts of history to the Divine mind. At present, however, Peter speaks directly not of the foreordaining counsel of God, but of the fact that things are so ordered in time, that unbelief carries in its train the turning to men's own hurt of that grace of God in Christ which brings honour to the believer. Weiss, therefore, deals more fairly than most with the exegesis of the passage, when he says that it ‘does not speak of the foreordination of individuals to unbelief, or to exclusion from the kingdom of God; it states that in accordance with a Divine arrangement the disobedient are appointed to stumbling, i.e, however, not to going astray morally, but to destruction' (Bib. Theol. i. p. 208, Eng. Trans.). This Divine order or determination of things, however, which links together subjective aversion to truth and objective penalty, is a mystery to which, not less than to that of the Divine foreordination, Leighton's words apply: ‘Here it were easier to lead you into a deep than to lead you forth again. I will rather stand on the shore and silently admire, than enter into it.'