Matthew 21:44 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Whosoever shall fall on this stone. — There is a manifest reference to the “stumbling and falling and being broken” of Isaiah 8:14-15. In the immediate application of the words, those who “fell” were those who were “offended” at the outward lowliness of Him who came as the carpenter’s son, and died a malefactor’s death. That “fall” brought with it pain and humiliation. High hopes had to be given up, the proud heart to be bruised and broken. But there the fall was not irretrievable. The bruise might be healed; it was the work of the Christ to heal it. But when it fell on him who was thus offended (here there is a rapid transition to the imagery and the thoughts, even to the very words, of Daniel 2:35; Daniel 2:44), when Christ, or that Church which He identifies with Himself, shall come into collision with the powers that oppose Him, then it shall “grind them to powder.” The primary meaning of the word so rendered is that of winnowing by threshing the grain, and so separating it from the chaff, and its use was probably suggested by the imagery of Daniel 2:35, where the gold and silver and baser materials that made up the image of Nebuchadnezzar’s vision were “broken in pieces together, and became as the chaff of the summer threshing-floor.” In its wider meaning it includes the destruction of all that resists Christ’s kingdom, and so represents the positive side of the truth which has its negative expression in the promise that “the gates of hell shall not prevail” against His Church (Matthew 16:18).