- Psalms 118 BSB ↗
Walk past any building site and you will see a pile of stones the masons have set aside: chipped, oddly shaped, not square enough for the wall. Nobody expects anything from that pile. Then imagine the day the building is finished and the stone holding the whole corner together, the one everything else rests on, turns out to be one of those rejects. Psalm 118 uses exactly that picture for someone God rescued after others had written them off. It is the closing song of the Hallel, and its line about the rejected stone became one of the most quoted Old Testament verses in the New Testament.
Where it sits in the story: Psalm 118 closes the Hallel (113–118) sung at Passover, and it is the most dramatic of the group: a procession, a rescued leader, gates thrown open. In the Old Testament story it celebrates a deliverance from surrounding nations. In the Gospels, the crowd at Jesus' entry into Jerusalem shouts its words, and Jesus himself applies the rejected-stone line to his own coming rejection. The song of one rescue becomes a key to reading another.
What this chapter is doing: To give thanks for a deliverance so complete it is described as rescue from death, to stage that thanks as a procession into God's house, and to celebrate the reversal by which the rejected one becomes the cornerstone.
- 118:1–4 — Give thanks, for the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever. Israel, the house of Aaron and those who fear the LORD each take up the refrain in turn, like a leader and choir.
- 118:5–14 — The speaker recalls distress: all nations surrounded him, swarming like bees, and he was pushed hard, close to falling. But the LORD helped him. It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in people or princes.
- 118:15–21 — Songs of victory ring out in the tents of the righteous. The speaker was disciplined severely but not handed over to death. Now he asks for the gates of righteousness to be opened so he can go in and give thanks.
- 118:22–24 — The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this is the LORD's doing, marvellous to see. In its first setting the stone is most likely the rescued leader or Israel itself, despised by the nations and raised up by God. This is the day the LORD has made.
- 118:25–29 — The crowd cries 'save us, we pray' (in Hebrew, the root of 'hosanna') and blesses the one who comes in the LORD's name. A festal procession goes up to the altar, and the psalm ends where it began: his steadfast love endures forever.
Key verse: Psalm 118:22 · So what: Almost everyone has at some point been the stone set aside: passed over for a job, dismissed by family, written off by a system. This psalm does not pretend the rejection did not hurt. It says God builds with such stones. Christians see the fullest form of that in Jesus, rejected by the leaders of his day and, they believe, vindicated by God.