This study considers a prophecy given in Scripture and the record of its fulfilment. The prophets spoke long before the events they described, and the account of fulfilment is part of why the text commands attention.
The Prophecy
Psalm 118:22-23 declares, “The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvellous in our eyes.” These words form the climax of a thanksgiving psalm that was almost certainly sung by pilgrims approaching the temple, and by many accounts it was the psalm most closely associated with the Passover and with the Messiah. The “builders” are the recognized experts of the day—those charged with shaping and assembling God’s house. Yet the very stone they examine and discard as unfit is the one God Himself selects and exalts to the place of highest honour, the cornerstone from which the whole structure takes its alignment. The psalmist presents this reversal not as human accident but as divine act: “This is the LORD’s doing.”
The prophecy is striking precisely because it is counterintuitive. It does not predict that the rejected stone will merely be vindicated in public opinion; it predicts that the rejected stone becomes the head of the corner—the load-bearing, defining stone of the building. And it attributes the entire reversal to the Lord, calling it “marvellous in our eyes.” In its original setting the psalm celebrates a national deliverance, but its language reaches beyond that occasion. It plants a pattern in Israel’s worship: the one whom the appointed authorities reject is the one God installs. That pattern waits for its full realisation in the One who would come to His own and be received by a remnant, while the leaders of the nation stumble over Him.
The Fulfilment
In Matthew 21:42-43 Jesus stands in the temple courts, fresh from telling the parable of the wicked husbandmen, and He quotes this very psalm to His hearers: “Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?” He then draws the conclusion in verse 43: “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.” The record is careful about what it claims. Jesus does not say the psalm was written about Him as a matter of private opinion; He asks whether they have read it, implying the text itself speaks to the situation He is addressing. The “builders” are the chief priests and elders—the recognized custodians of Israel’s spiritual house—who are in the very act of rejecting Him.
What the text does not claim is equally important. It does not say the nation of Israel is abandoned or that individual Israelites cannot enter the kingdom; it says the kingdom is taken from a leadership that rejects the cornerstone and given to a people producing its fruits. Nor does it claim the rejection was unforeseen or that it defeated God’s purpose. On the contrary, the quotation insists the rejection and the exaltation are both “the Lord’s doing.” Matthew records the saying as fulfilled prophecy: the stone the builders are rejecting in real time is the stone God is making the head of the corner, and the marvellous reversal is already underway in the presence of those who are carrying it out.
Why It Matters
Fulfilled prophecy of this kind demonstrates that Scripture is not a collection of disconnected religious writings but a single, coherent revelation whose Author knows the end from the beginning. A psalm composed centuries earlier, sung in temple worship, described a rejection and vindication that its original singers could not have engineered. When Jesus applies it to Himself before the very authorities who would hand Him over, He is not twisting a text to fit events; He is identifying the events as the outworking of what God had already said. The specificity is telling: not merely that a deliverer would come, but that the appointed builders would reject him, and that God would make that rejection the foundation of something new.
This matters for how we read the whole Bible. If God could foretell and accomplish the rejection and exaltation of His Son, then His promises concerning judgment, salvation, and the final kingdom are equally trustworthy. The resurrection stands as the public seal of this pattern: the stone the builders rejected was raised to the place of honour. For the reader today, the prophecy and its fulfilment call for the same decision it demanded then—to recognise the cornerstone for who He is, and to be found among those who bring forth the fruits of the kingdom rather than among the builders who stumble over the stone.
Passages
- The prophecy: Psalm 118:22-23
- The fulfilment: Matthew 21:42-43