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The Lord hath also a controversy with Judah - The rest of the prophecy belongs both to Judah and Israel. He reproaches both with their ingratitude, and threatens them with God's anger. In order to make their infidelity the more hateful, and their malice the more sensible, he opposes to them the righteousness, obedience, and piety of their father Jacob. He recalls to their minds the benefits they had received since they returned from Egypt. He speaks afterwards of their kings; and how, in their ingratitude, they refused to have him for their monarch. Having mentioned this fact, he subjoins reflections, exhortations, invectives, and threatenings, and continues this subject in this and the two following chapters. - Calmet.

The Lord hath 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 saith 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 thee. Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and fight against thee with the sword of My mouth” Revelation 2:12, Revelation 2:16. 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, i. e., 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, Thou 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 hath predestinated.”

Ephraim feeds himself with vain hopes of help from man, when he is at enmity with God. The Jews vainly thought to secure the Egyptians by a present of the produce of their country. Judah is contended with also. God sees the sin of his own people, and will reckon with them for it. They are put in mind of what Jacob did, and what God did for him. When his faith upon the Divine promise prevailed above his fears, then by his strength he had power with God. He is Jehovah, the same that was, and is, and is to come. What was a revelation of God to one, is his memorial to many, to all generations. Then let those who have gone from God, be turned to him. Turn thou to the Lord, by repentance and faith, as thy God. Let those that are converted to him, walk with him in all holy conversation and godliness. Let us wrestle with Him for promised blessings, determined not to give over till we prevail; and let us seek Him in his ordinances.