The Confusing Sayings: Luke 20:17

Then what is the meaning of that which is written: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’?"

This article is part of a series explaining Jesus’s Confusing Sayings.

If any of Jesus’s verse’s are confusing to you, let me know in a comment and I can analyze its Greek in a future article.

The Pharisees challenged Jesus about the source of his authority. He tells them the Parable of the Vine-growers, the ones who killed the owner’s servants who came to collect the rent. The parable ends with the growers killing the owner’s son. Jesus then quotes Psalms, but the line he quote fits perfectly into the way that he himself teaches, down to the punchline at the end.

Here is a modern Biblical translation of what Jesus said quoting Psalms in Luke 20:17.

Luke 20:17 “Then what is the meaning of that which is written:  ‘The stone the builders rejected has turned the cornerstone’?"

• The words that we will be discussing in this article are shown in boldface.

Jesus was asking the Pharisees the meaning of this quote. He knew that they would find it confusing. The quote is from Psalms 118:22. Jesus’s Greek is identical to the version in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament. The Greek is a translation from the Hebrew, translated only a couple hundred of years before. As a man who worked in construction, this quote would appeal to Jesus. Other workmen probably understood it as well because most had likely helped with wall repairs. What kind of people wouldn’t understand it? Scholars like the Pharisees, who saw manual labor as below them. This is why Jesus asks the Pharisees its meaning. He knows that they won’t know.

Today, we might ask our translators of the Bible the same question. They miss the point entirely, both its meaning in the construction of a wall and the wordplay from the original Hebrew about leadership. Instead, they offered something many might understand more easily but which misses the key idea of what Jesus was saying about himself.

The Rejected Stone

The first question we should wonder about is why was the stone rejected? For some reason, it wasn’t suitable for building. Why not?

The buildings of the time in Galilee were made of stone. There was little wood in Galilee. In house construction, wood was reserved for holding up the roof. What kind of stones do people use in building? They use flat-sided blocks. The blocks are stacked in rows. Small or large stones could act as these bricks, but only if they were flat on top and bottom and at least two opposing sides. Stones that were angled and couldn’t be flatten on one of these key sides were were rejected because they would cause the wall to tilt. A slight tilt would get worse and worse as the wall gets higher. Each stone must fit evenly and easily into the level lines of stones that form the wall.

The main skill of a builder at the time was picking out the right stones for each rank of the wall. The rejected stone couldn’t be used in that line of stones because it was too irregularly shaped. It doesn’t fit in with the rank and file. It definitely could not sit as a foundation stone, as it is portrayed in English translation. The cornerstone is in the bottom row of stones. A stone that becomes a cornerstone cannot be rejected at any point because it is the first and largest stone used. Jesus did not describe himself as a cornerstone.

The Coping or Capstones

Here is what Jesus’s listeners who understood his meaning heard when Jesus spoke this line.

Listeners Heard: What then is this having been written? This one here: “those house-builders rejected a stone, this one here. It has changed into a capstone of a corner.

The phrase “capstone of the corner” would be a term of art for the construction trade. The word translated as “capstone” means “head,” but it was used to mean the "head of a man or beast", "the top", “the leader,” "the capital (top) of a pillar", "the coping of a wall", and, metaphorically, the "crowning" or "completion" of a thing. We have some of these meanings in English when we say things like “the head of the class,” “coming to a head,” and so on. The key definition here is “the coping of a wall.” A coping stone is what we call the capstone. We can see a peaked version at the top of this page. Its job on any wall is to shed water outside the ranks of stones so the wall doesn’t break down. We can see how this slanted stone wouldn’t work in the wall itself.

The builders here are specifically house-builders. In building a house at the time, the coping stones or capstones would have been slanted on top to one side of the wall to shed the water outside the house. The entire length of every exterior wall would be lined with capstones.

The Capstone of the Corner

Capstones of a corner of a building are in each corner. A rectangular building would have no fewer than four. It could be slanted in one direction of two directions to shed water outside both walls at the corner. Its angles would make it twice as unsuitable as another brick in the wall. The Pink Floyd song, “Another Brick in the Wall,” was about conformity, where each brick in the wall is a symbol for uniformity. “We don’t need no thought control.” Jesus is saying that the capstone of the corner doesn’t conform.

The Greek word translated as “corner” means "corner", "angle," and "a leader of people". Notice that the word “head” and “corner” both mean “leader.” We don't use the word "corner" similarly, but the meaning is easier to understand if you think of the corners as supporting a structure, like a pillar does. We do say a "pillar of the community" to describe a leader. In Greek, they would say "the corner of a community" in the same sense.

The double meaning of the “head of a corner” is “a chief of a leader,” that is,“ a king of a king.” What is surprising is that this same play on words originally appeared in the Hebrew version of this verse. The Hebrew words also mean “head of the corner,” and the Hebrew word for “head” also means “chief” and “corner” also means “leader.” This Hebrew wordplay was preserved in the Greek.

Jesus as the Stone

This is how Jesus described himself. He was certainly rejected like the son of the vineyard owner was rejected by the vine growers. He was odd, not conforming to the straight lines in the wall nor the expected form of the Messiah. The Pharisees may not have understood the “head of the corner” statement regarding construction, but they might have heard the “chief of a leader.” Jesus could have been prosecuted by the Romans for calling himself a king of a king, that is, an emperor, but this claim was hidden by wordplay.

However, in describing himself as “a head of a corner,” he is not describing himself as unique. There would normally be three more. Of course, in a three-sided building we only have three corners, so we get a Trinity.