Matthew Chapter 21 verse 44 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 44. - Christ proceeds to show the positive and terrible results of such unbelief. Whosoever shall fall (πεσὼν, hath fallen) on this stone shall be broken (συνθλασθήσεται, shall be shattered to pieces). This may refer to the practice of executing the punishment of stoning by first hurling the culprit from a raised platform on to a rock or stone, and then stoning him to death. The falling on the stone has been explained in more ways than one. Some think that it implies coming to Christ in repentance and humility, with a contrite heart, which he will not despise. But the subject here is the punishment of the obdurate. Others take it to represent an attack made by the enemies of Christ, who shall demolish themselves by such onslaught. The original will hardly allow this interpretation. Doubtless the allusion is to those who found in Christ's low estate a stone of stumbling and rock of offence. These suffered grievous loss and danger even in this present time. The rejection of the doctrine of Christ crucified involves the loss of spiritual privileges, moral debility, and what is elsewhere called "the scattering abroad" (Matthew 12:30; comp. Isaiah 8:14, 15). On whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder (λικμήσει αὐτὸν, it will scatter him as chaff). The persons here spoken of are not those who are offended at Christ's low estate; they are such as put themselves in active opposition to him and his kingdom; on them he will fall in terrible vengeance, and will utterly destroy them without hope of recovery. The idea is rerepeated from Daniel 2:34, 35, and Daniel 2:44, 45. Christ in his humiliation is the Stone against which men fall; Christ in his glory and exaltation is the Stone which falls on them.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(44) 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).