Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 12:2

"Jehovah hath also a controversy with Judah, and will punish Jacob according to his ways; according to his doings will he recompense him." — Hosea 12:2 (ASV)

The Lord has also a controversy with Judah, and will punish Jacob – The guilt of Judah was not open apostasy, nor had he filled up the measure of his sins. Of him, then, God says only, that He “had a controversy with” him, as our Lord says to the “Angel of the Church of Pergamos, I have a few things against you. Repent, or else I will come to you quickly, and fight against you with the sword of My mouth” (Revelation 2:12, 16). Of Ephraim, whose sin was complete, He says, that the Lord “is to punish.” God had set His mind, as we say, on punishing him; He had (so to speak) set Himself to do it.

Jacob, like Israel, is here the name for the chief part of Israel, that is, the ten tribes. Our Lord uses the same gradation in speaking of different degrees of evil-speaking: “Whosoever of you is angry without a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; but whosoever shall say, You fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire” (Matthew 5:22).

“The justice of God falls more severely on those who degenerate from a holy parent, than on those who have no incitement to good from the piety of their home.”

To amplify this, “The prophet explains what good things Jacob received, to show both the mercy of God to Jacob, and the hardness of Ephraim toward God. While Jacob was yet in his mother’s womb, he took his brother by the heel, not by any strength of his own, but by the mercy of God, who knows and loves those whom he has predestined.”