The Stone—Living and Deadly

Peter now turns from exhorting his readers to conduct that befits their life within the believing community to inviting them to consider the nature of that community which Christ has brought into existence.

2:4  The shift to stone from the figure of “milk” (v. 2) is unexpected and seemingly without reason. But for a Jewish reader there is a natural succession of ideas in this passage—not milk: stone, but the Hebraic one of babes: house. A helpful illustration is in Genesis 16:2. Sarai gives her maidservant Hagar to Abram in the hope that “I shall obtain children by her” (RSV). The Hebrew is literally “that I may be built through her.” To obtain children is to become a house (as in “house of David”); to become a house is to be built. So Peter’s juxtaposition of the…