This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders. — Better, of you, the builders. The members of the Council to whom Peter spoke had heard those words (Psalms 118:22) quoted and interpreted before. (See Notes on Matthew 21:42-44.) Then they had thought, in their blindness, that they could defy the warning. They, by their calling, the builders of the Church of Israel, did reject the stone which God had chosen to be the chief corner-stone — the stone on which the two walls of Jew and Gentile met and were bonded together (Ephesians 2:20). Here again the Epistles of St. Peter reproduce one of the dominant thoughts of his speeches (1 Peter 2:6-8), and give it a wider application. Thirty years after he thus spoke, Christ was still to him as “the head of the corner.”
Set at nought. — St. Peter does not quote the Psalm, but alludes to it with a free variation of language. The word for “set at nought” is characteristic of St. Luke (Luke 18:9; Luke 23:11) and St. Paul (Romans 14:3; Romans 14:10, et al.).