1 Peter 2:7

He is precious. — Rather, Unto you therefore, the believers, belongs the honour. So said in reference to His being called “a stone elect, honoured,” taken in conjunction with “shall not be ashamed.” Both the Hebrew and the Greek word rendered “precious” may with equal propriety be translated “honoured,” and this contrasts better with the “shame” just spoken of. Thus Dr. Lightfoot takes it. The argument is this: “God has selected Jesus for special honour, and has promised that all who trust in Him, instead of scorning Him like the Jewish rulers, shall have no cause to blush. Now you do trust in Him, therefore to you belongs the promise, and the honour bestowed by God on Him reflects on you. You, like Him, are made parts of the divine imperishable architecture.”

Unto them which be disobedient. — The better reading is, Unto them which disbelieve; the other word being an importation from 1 Peter 2:8. The true reading better preserves the contrast with “you that believe.”

The stone which the builders disallowed. — We should perhaps have rather expected the sentence to run more like this: “To you which believe belongs the honour, but to those who disbelieve belongs the shame from which you are secured.” But instead, the Apostle stops short, and inserts (by a quotation) the historical fact which brought the shame, viz., the disappointment of their own design, and the glorious completion of that which they opposed. The words which follow are quoted directly from the LXX., and properly represent the Hebrew. Almost all the best modern critics consider the Psalm from which this verse is cited to be a late Psalm, written subsequent to the return from Babylon, in which case it is most probable that the composer was directly thinking of the prophecy of Isaiah above quoted. The Messianic interpretation of the Psalm would be no novelty to the Hebrews who received this Epistle (see Matthew 21:9), though probably they had not perceived it in its fulness. In its first application the passage seems to mean as follows: The speaker is Israel, taken as a single person. He has been a despised captive. The great builders of the world — the Babylonian and Persian empires — had recognised no greatness in him, and had no intention of advancing him; they were engaged in aggrandisement of self alone. Yet, after all, Israel is firmly planted once more in Sion, to be the first stone of a new structure, a new empire. Thus this interpretation at once suggests the admission of the Gentiles, humanity at large, into the architecture. Israel is the corner-stone, but corner-stones are not laid to be left unbuilt upon. In the fulfilment Christ takes the place of Israel, as is the case with Isaiah 53. The builders are the rulers of the Jews. In Acts 4:11 our author had called the Sanhedrin to their face, “you builders.” They, like the kings of Babylon, had been intent on building a fabric of their own, and had despised Jesus, yet, without any intention of so doing, had been the means of advancing Him (Acts 4:27). He had been made the basis of a new spiritual structure, in which faith, not fleshly lineage, was the cement and bond; and the believing Israelites, united to Him in both ways, shared the honour of being corner-stone. A further point is given to the quotation if we suppose, with Hengstenberg, Delitzsch, and others, that the remembrance of Isaiah’s prophecy of the “corner-stone” was suggested to the original Psalmist by the works of the Second Temple, then begun, advancing, or fresh completed. It will then fit in more perfectly with the description of the “spiritual house.” Leighton well points out how sore a trial it was to the faith of Jewish Christians to see that their own chosen people, even the most learned of them, rejected Christ, and adds, “That they may know this makes nothing against Him, nor ought to invalidate their faith at all, but rather testifies with Christ, and so serves to confirm them in believing, the Apostle makes use of those prophetical scriptures that foretell the unbelief and contempt with which the most would entertain Christ.”