Ephraim has given bitter provocation; so his Lord will leave his bloodguilt on him and will repay him for his disgraceful deeds.
The Prophet says first, that Ephraim had provoked God by his high places Some, however, take the word תמרורים, tamerurim, for bitternesses. Then it is, “Israel or Ephraim have provoked God to bitterness.” But since this word in other places as in the thirty-first of Jeremiah, is taken for high places and as it clearly appears that the Prophet here inveighs avowedly against Israel and...
Here are intermixed, in these verses, I. Reproofs for sin. When God is coming forth to contend with a people, that he may demonstrate his own righteousness, he will demonstrate their unrighteousness. Ephraim was called to turn to his God and keep judgment (Hos 12:6); now, to show that he had need of that call, he is charged with turning from his God by idolatry...
Commenting on Hosea 12:7-14
Ephraim provoked him to anger most bitterly,.... The Vulgate Latin version supplies it, me; that is, God, as Kimchi; or his Lord, as it may be supplied from the last clause of the verse; the sense is the same either way: it was God that Ephraim or the ten tribes provoked to stir up his wrath and vengeance against them; notwithstanding all the favours that...