I will praise thee, for thou hast heard me That is, “And now, being entered into the courts of thy tabernacle, O my gracious God, I pay thee my most humble thanks, for having so favourably heard the prayers which I put up to thee in my grievous afflictions in Saul's reign, and for having now fully advanced me to the royal dignity.” The stone which the builders rejected, &c. That is, “I, (for they are the words of David,) whom the great men and rulers of the people rejected, (1 Samuel 26:19,) as the builders of a house do a stone, which they judge unfit to be employed in it: am now become king over Judah and Israel, and a type of that glorious king, who shall hereafter be in like manner rejected,
(Luke 19:14; Luke 20:17,) and then exalted by God, to be Lord of all the world, and the foundation of all men's hopes and happiness.” The reader will observe, the commonwealth of Israel, and the church of God, are here, and elsewhere in the Scriptures, compared to a building, wherein, as the people were the stones, so the princes and rulers were the builders. And as these master-builders, here first referred to, rejected David, as an obscure and rebellious person, that ought not only to be refused as a governor in their state, but crushed and destroyed; so their successors rejected Jesus of Nazareth, as too poor and mean to be acknowledged for their expected Messiah; as an enemy to Moses, a friend to sinners, and a blasphemer against God, and therefore deserving death and everlasting destruction. The head stone of the corner, means that which joins the walls, and knits the building together; as David had now joined together the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah under his sole government, and as Christ joined together both Jews and Gentiles, as is beautifully set forth Ephesians 2:14-22. So that we have here an illustrious prophecy of the humiliation and exaltation of our Lord Jesus, of his sufferings, and the glory that should follow. And although David, in this noted prophecy, first alluded to himself, and his own condition, yet it is not to be doubted but that, having the prophetical Spirit, he foresaw the coming of Christ, and the ill usage he should meet with from the Jews, of which he speaks very particularly Psalms 22. and elsewhere; and that, having his thoughts much taken up with Christ, and the events of his kingdom, he had him principally in his eye, in these and the following words. And therefore this place is justly expounded of Christ in the New Testament, as Mark 12:10; Acts 4:11; Romans 9:32; Ephesians 2:20; 1 Peter 2:6, compared with Isaiah 28:16. And to him, indeed, the words agree much more properly and fully than to David.