The parable ended with the beloved son killed and cast out of the vineyard (Mark 12:8). Jesus now shows from Scripture that rejection would not be the end of the story. His hearers were the experts. Gill says many of them were "teachers of the people, and therefore ought to have read the scriptures." Mark's Greek begins with oude, "not even": have you not read even this? Barnes explains that Jesus, having led them to admit the justice of the owner's verdict, now applies it with a text showing that what they approved for the husbandmen had been foretold about themselves. The question presses them to see themselves in Psalm 118 as the builders who rejected the stone.

Jesus' question runs on into the next line of the psalm: "This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?" (Mark 12:11). The leaders gave no answer in words. Instead, "they sought to lay hold on him, but feared the people: for they knew that he had spoken the parable against them" (Mark 12:12). In Matthew, Jesus adds that the kingdom of God would be taken from them, and that whoever falls on this stone "shall be broken" (Matthew 21:43-44).

Jesus is quoting Psalm 118:22-23, which in the KJV reads, "The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner." Barnes says the psalm "was first applicable to David; but no less to Jesus." The picture comes from building a house. Barnes explains that "The principal stone for size and beauty is that commonly laid as the cornerstone." A stone the builders set aside as unfit ended up in the place of highest honor.

The Greek word for "rejected" is apodokimazo. Thayer's lexicon defines it "to disapprove, reject, repudiate." The builders turned the stone down. "Head of the corner" translates kephalen gonias, literally "head of the corner," which the ESV renders "cornerstone."

The question reveals how God answers human rejection. In the parable the son is killed and thrown out. In the psalm the rejected stone is lifted to the top. Barnes writes, "Though rejected by them, yet God chose him, and made him the foundation of the church." Gill reads the stone as the same person as the son and heir in the parable, Jesus Himself, and the builders as the chief priests, scribes, and elders.

The apostles later preached this same verse. Standing before the council, Peter called Jesus "the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner," the One "whom God raised from the dead" (Acts 4:10-11). Barnes lists Acts 4:11 and 1 Peter 2:7 among the places where Christ is compared to a cornerstone.