What Does Jeremiah 1:10 Mean?

(10) **I have this day set thee . . .**—With the gift, and therefore the consciousness, of a new power, there comes what would at first have been too much for the mortal vessel of the truth to bear—a prospective view of the greatness of the work before him. He is at once set (literally, made the “deputy,” or representative, of God, as in Judges 9:28 and 2Chronicles 24:11, the “officer,” or in Jeremiah 20:1, “chief governor”) over the nations, *i.e., *as before, the nations external to Israel, and the “kingdoms” including it. The work at first seems one simply of destruction—to *root out and ruin *(so we may represent the alliterative assonance of the Hebrew), *to destroy and rend asunder. *But beyond that there is the hope of a work of construction. He is to “build up” the fallen ruins of Israel, to “plant” in the land that had been made desolate. The whole sequel of the book is a comment on these words. It passes through terror and darkness to the glory and the blessing of the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31).