113 WHY ARE THE SINS OF EPHRAIM AND JOB BUNDLED? Neo-Babylonian parallels presented here tip the balance in favor of the puni- tive reading of both Job 14,17 and Hos 13,12. The sins are the equivalent of the physical evidence against the sinner; they are bound and sealed so that they can be kept, not so that they can be removed from use. The punitive interpretation of the image in Job 14,17 must contend with the problem of the apparent contrast between not keeping sin in 14,16b and binding sin in 14,17. Commentators have already suggested three so- lutions, any of which could be adopted 23. One may explain the contrast by interpreting 14,17 as the point of transition from Job’s utopian musings about a world in which sin is forgiven, or not kept (14,15-16), back to re- ality, where sin is punished, or kept bound up 24. Alternatively, one may identify the transition from utopia back to reality in 14,16 (signaled by ht( yk) and read 14,16b as Job’s rhetorical question to God, the answer to which is that God does, indeed, keep sin and does, likewise, bind sin in a bundle 25. Or, if one retains the negation from 14,16b through 14,17, Job imagines an ideal world in which God does not keep and does not bind his sin, and the harsh confrontation with reality comes only in 14,18 (signaled by Mlw)w) 26. Here is not the place to weigh the relative merits of any of these three interpretations. Their value, for the purposes of the present study, is that they all recognize that when Job declares that his sin is “sealed up in a bundle”, he means that his sin is unforgiven. Recognizing the basic meaning of the bound sins in Hosea 13,12 and Job 14,17 and identifying the forensic roots of this image allow one to situate the two verses within the broader discourse about sin in the Hebrew Bible. Accordingly, both verses share an image with Ps 130,3, where God is said, at least hypothetically, to “keep” (r_m_#) sins 27. This, of course, resem- bles more widely attested descriptions of God “remembering” sins 28. And, 23 Solutions presented here retain the MT. For emendations with similar results, see, for example, G.H.A. VON EWALD, Commentary on the Book of Job With Translation (London 1882) 168 and A. DILLMANN, Hiob (Leipzig 1891) 126. 24 E.M. GOOD, In Turns of Tempest. A Reading of Job with a Translation (Stanford, CA 1990) 241. 25 S.R. DRIVER – G.B. GRAY, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Job (ICC 15; Edinburgh 1921) II, 92; G. FOHRER, Das Buch Hiob (KAT 16; Gütersloh 1963) 259. 26 A. ḤAKHAM, Job with The Jerusalem Commentary (Jerusalem 2009) 140. 27 As observed (regarding Hosea only) by H.-J. KRAUS, Psalms 60-150. A Commentary (Minneapolis, MN 1989) 466. 28 E.J. PENTIUC, Long-Suffering Love. A Commentary on Hosea with Pa- tristic Annotations (Brookline, MA 2002) 199. Also see R. KNIERIM, Die Hauptbegriffe für Sünde im Alten Testament (Gütersloh 1965) 95. For a col- lection of the data on this topic, see Š. PORÚBČAN, Sin in the Old Testament. A Soteriological Study (Rome 1963) 287-298.