Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 11:12

"Ephraim compasseth me about with falsehood, and the house of Israel with deceit; but Judah yet ruleth with God, and is faithful with the Holy One." — Hosea 11:12 (ASV)

Ephraim encompasses Me with lies - Having spoken of future repentance, conversion, and restoration, he turns back to those around him and declares why they can have no share in that restoration. Nothing about them was true. If ever they approached God, it was “with lies.”

God, being infinite, cannot really be “encompassed.” The prophet speaks this way to describe the great multitude of those who thus lied to God, and the multitude and multiplicity of their lies. Wherever God looked, in all parts of their kingdom, in all their doings, all that He could see was lying to Himself. All was, as it were, one throng of lies, heaped on one another, jostling with one another. Such is the world now.

Their sin was especially a lie because they sinned not through ignorance, but through malice. Their chief lie was the setting up of the worship of the calves with a worldly end, yet with a pretense of religion toward God, denying Him, the One true God, in that they joined idols with Him, yet professing to serve Him.

And so all their worship of God, their repentance, their prayers, and their sacrifices were all one lie, for one lie underlay all, penetrated all, and corrupted all. All half-belief is unbelief; all half-repentance is unrepentance; all half-worship is unworship. Because each and all present themselves as that divine whole of which they are but the counterfeit, they are all “lies” with which men, on all sides, encompass God.

From these wrong thoughts of God all their other deceits flowed, while yet, “they deceived, not Him but themselves, in that they thought that they could deceive Him, who cannot be deceived.” When Christ came, the house of Israel surrounded Him with lies, the scribes and lawyers, the Pharisees and Sadducees, and Herodians vying with one another how they might entangle Him in His talk (Matthew 22:15).

But Judah yet rules with God - Ephraim had cast off the rule of God, the kings and priests whom He had appointed, so that his whole kingdom and polity was without God and against Him. In contrast with this, Judah, amid all his sins, was outwardly faithful. He adhered to the line of kings from whom was to spring the Christ, David’s Son but David’s Lord. He worshiped with the priests whom God had appointed to offer the typical sacrifices, until “He” should come, “the high priest forever, after the order of Melchisedek,” who should end those sacrifices by the Sacrifice of Himself.

Thus far Judah “ruled with God;” he was on the side of God, maintained the worship of God, and was upheld by God. So Abijah said to Jeroboam, “The Lord is our God, and we have not forsaken Him, and the priests which minister unto the Lord are the sons of Aaron, and the Levites wait upon their business. For we keep the charge of the Lord our God, but ye have forsaken Him, and behold God is with us for our Captain, ...” (2 Chronicles 13:10–12).

And is faithful with the saints - Or (better perhaps, with the E. M.) “with the All-Holy.” The same plural is used of God elsewhere (Joshua 24:19); and its use, like that of the ordinary name of God, is founded on the mystery of the Trinity. It does not teach it, but neither can it be accounted for in any other way.

This faithfulness of Judah was outward only (as the upbraiding of the prophet to Judah testifies), yet it much favored inward holiness. The body without the soul is dead; yet the life, even when seeming to be dying out, might be brought back when the body was there; not when it too was dissolved.

Hence, Judah had many good kings, Israel none. Yet, in that he says, “yet rules with God,” he shows that a time was coming when Judah too would be, not “with God” but against Him, and also would be cast off.