The Cornerstone Lost

Many people go through the Bible for years and are surprised when they find something they had not seen or heard before.

This happened to me.

I found the verse in Zechariah 3:10 speaking about a cornerstone that had the engraving cleaned out and to be set back in the temple stones covering the foundation by Zerubbabel and the high priest Joshua.

This led to other verses.

I became like a detective searching for all the clues.

The Bible gives the history of the temples built from Solomon to Herod the Great. The cornerstone is not mentioned in the history Solomon's temple or of Herod's temple.

A lot of details are given to the building of Solomon's temple. The amount of gold, silver, and iron used are recorded. The contract between Solomon and King Hiram of Tyre is recorded. How many men working in the forest of Lebanon are recorded, and how often they were relieved. There is no mention of the cornerstone there.

It is not mentioned in the history of King Herod. This is because he never set it in his temple. He hid it. We can know it was there because of the record of it being replaced by Zerubbabel, and it was the temple built by Zerubbabel that Herod was tearing apart and remodeling.

Zechariah qualifies it being in Solomon's temple by telling of the cleaning out the engraving and of the old men who saw it reset by Zerubbabel, and when they saw it, they wept loudly from the remembrance of it in the first temple (Ezra 3:12).

What is the importance of this stone?

It is the engraving. What is the meaning of the seven eyes engraved on it? This is what gives you its importance. Revelation 5:6 tells you what the seven eyes represent.

Here is where people get uncomfortable. Revelations speak of God having seven spirits. They get confused, and this is unsettling. But let us think for just a moment. Yes, the Bible speaks of God being one Spirit. He is! The spirit used in Revelation is used in a different way. As God has the spirit of wrath, grief, long-suffering, forgiveness, and others. Why eyes? This represents God looking into the affairs of men in the ways of wrath, patience, and the five others

Jesus came in the fullness of God with these ways of looking into men.

The cornerstone is the token sign of the coming Messiah to the Jews. He was the cornerstone of their faith, unknowingly. But the cornerstone significance will become known. The Messiah, Jesus, would become their Messiah as they learn and understand the scriptures and his life.

This Old Testament verse from Habakkuk 2:11 tie it up: "For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it."

It is this author's belief that King Herod the Great hid the cornerstone in the walls around the temple complex as he remodeled and enlarged it. There are still walls left that we...