Oseas 13:12

"The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up; his sin is laid up in store."

"As men count money and put it away in a bag, so Jehovah has counted the sins of Ephraim and was holding them all for reckoning. They were laid up before him for judgment."[25]

A significant fact of God's dealings with men appears here in that even the worst of sins may not suffer divine punishment promptly upon the occasions when they were committed; but that does not mean that God has forgotten or that he will overlook the evil deeds perpetrated by men. The records are accurately kept, and eternal justice will at last be meted out to every man.

"For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad" (2 Corinthians 5:10).

In the case of Northern Israel, addressed here by Hosea in God's name, their conduct had finally exhausted the patience and forbearance of God Himself; the cup of his wrath was full and about to overflow.

The New English Bible translates Hosea 13:12 thus:

"Ephraim's guilt is tied up in a scroll, his sins are kept on record."

Amazingly, the imagery is the same here as that of Revelation 18:5, where the sins of the great harlot church are represented as a scroll long enough to reach heaven itself! Again, we have a perfect correspondence between the sacred writers of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Both this verse, and the next one find their perfect echoes in the writings of the apostle John. In the following verse, it is the conception of the new birth!