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 they and their ancestors had received from him, they provoked him in a most bitter manner, to bitter anger, vehement wrath and fury: or, "with bitternesses" F14; with their sins, which are in their own nature bitter, displeasing to God; and in their effects bring bitterness and death on those that commit them; meaning particularly their idolatry, and all belonging to it; their idols, high places, altars The word here used is rendered "high heaps" F15, ( Jeremiah 31:21 ) ; and is here by Kimchi interpreted of altars, with which, and their sacrifices on them, they provoked the Lord to anger: therefore shall he leave his blood upon him;
the blood of innocent persons, prophets, and other good men shed by him; the sin of it shall be charged upon him, and he shall bear the punishment of it. So the Targum,
``the fault of innocent blood which he shed shall return upon him:''or "his own blood shall be poured out upon him" F16; in just retaliation for the blood of others shed by him, and for all the blood sired by him in idolatrous sacrifices, and other bloody sins; or his own blood being shed by the enemy shall remain upon him unrevenged; God will not punish those that shed it: and his reproach shall his Lord return unto him: