Hosea 12:14

"Ephraim hath provoked to anger most bitterly: therefore shall his blood be left upon him, and his reproach shall his Lord return unto him."

If God's people today are to avoid the error of Ephraim, they must have regard, not only to the grace and mercy of the Lord, but also to the fact, "Of God's demands upon the covenant community."[23] Nobody ever trusted any more completely in God's promises than did Ephraim; but he made the mistake of supposing that they were unconditional, a mistake exactly like that of people today who fancy that they are "saved by faith alone." Ask Ephraim! God had promised Ephraim that he would give the land of Canaan (Genesis 30:13-15) to them; and Ephraim, like the Pharisees long afterward, concluded that this promise on God's part was theirs, no matter what they did, how they lived, or anything else! He was operating by faith alone, and it did not work. You say, "but that was not real faith!" Of course, it was not, and neither is it when people presume to be saved without obeying the gospel, without being baptized, without belonging to the church, without taking the Lord's Supper, without anything else, really, just their so-called "faith."

Polkinghorne summarized the terse sentence of judgment pronounced in this verse thus:

Hosea 12:14 gives the final verdict on Israel from the patriarchal period onward. His severe provocation of the Lord necessitates the death penalty, which it is not proposed to waive. Only here does Hosea use the Hebrew word for "Lord," "[~'Adonay]," as distinct from [~YHWH].[24]