This new contribution by Lesley DiFransico to the growing field of the study of biblical metaphor considers the theme of washing away sin, with the goal of “trac[ing] the trajectory of the metaphor's development in the Hebrew Bible” and relating that “to the later practice of washing away sin attested in the sectarian literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the New Testament gospels” (3). Observing that “immersion or rinsing in water is not attested in the Hebrew Bible as an actual practice performed to solve the problem of sin” (19), the book examines the interrelationships between the relevant metaphors in the Hebrew Bible and explores the potential impact of these Hebrew Bible texts on later communities in which practices involving water as a solution to sin are known.

After an initial chapter that introduces the topic and describes DiFransico's approach, which involves applying the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, the core of the book consists of a series of close readings of passages in which language relating to the washing away of sin is found. Chapter 2 treats texts in Isaiah and Jeremiah (specifically, Isaiah 1:2–20; 4:2–6; Jeremiah 2:20–25; 4:11–18) containing novel metaphorical expressions envisioning sin as something that can be washed; chapter 3 discusses Psalm 51, Ezekiel 36:22–36, and Zechariah 13:1, arguing that these are based on “the more specific dimension of ritual washing and/or cleansing” (79; emphasis mine); and chapter 4 explains passages in the Dead Sea Scrolls (especially 1QS II, 25 – III, 12; and IV, 15–26) and the New Testament (focusing mostly on the figure of John the Baptist) as representing “an additional stage in the development of the concept of washing away sin in which the metaphorical concept is put into ritual practice” (144). A brief concluding chapter recapitulates the main arguments.

The textual analyses in the book are, for the most part, competently done. Each passage is presented in the author's translation along with numerous exegetical notes, followed by a more extensive “comment and analysis” section that treats various interpretive issues. A strength of the book lies in its consideration of the precise contours of each metaphor in question: from the source and target domains of the metaphor, to the theological implications of the expression in context, to possible resonances with other biblical texts. The format allows for more in-depth discussion of the metaphorical dimension of these texts than one finds in a standard commentary.

That said, despite the textual focus that this format makes possible, DiFransico occasionally overlooks details that have broader implications for the overall argument. Two examples are worth mentioning. In Jeremiah 2:22, DiFransico renders the phrase נִכְתָּם עֲוֹנֵךְ לְפָנַי as “the stain your iniquity is before me” (63, 65), ostensibly taking the first two words as a construct phrase (following such established translations as the NRSV and NIV). However, despite devoting a footnote (63 n. 125) specifically to the word נִכְתָּם, DiFransico does not observe that its masoretic pointing precludes the possibility of a construct form, which would have had patakh and not qamets as the second vowel. If one construes this participle as a substantive, denoting an object that is stained, then this would be consistent with an understanding of the metaphor as referring to stained clothing (cf. DiFransico's discussion in 65–68). But whether or not such an interpretation is to be preferred, the grammatical issue deserves at least some attention in view of its importance to the discussion.

A second example is the handling of the phrase (ב)מי דוכי in 1QS 3, 9. Here DiFransico offers divergent renderings of the phrase throughout the discussion, alternatively opting for “waters of repentance” (179, 185 [bottom]) or “running waters” (181, 185 [top], 186), with a footnote (181 n. 12) arguing for the “running waters” interpretation over against a third interpretation, “waters of purity.” Since the first two interpretations derive from different understandings of the same lexical identification—namely, a noun from the root דכה/דכא, “to crush,” taken to refer either to the physical movement of waters or to human contrition in a figurative sense—the mixing of the two in the book's discussion is confusing.

On the theoretical front, I am skeptical as to the usefulness of CMT as the basis for the study. Setting aside the questions that have been raised in the linguistic and philosophical literature regarding the theoretical tenability of CMT, this approach does not seem well suited to the topic at hand: by DiFransico's own admission, metaphors of washing away sin are both rare and diverse in their appearance in the Hebrew Bible, whereas CMT works best for metaphors that are conventionalized and systematic. Consequently, DiFransico's more perceptive observations—such as the importance attributed to whether the various passages involving the washing of sin envision the action as having a human or divine agent—are made in spite of CMT, not because of it. Indeed, the use of CMT unnecessarily constrains the analysis, for it sets up the expectation that the scattered metaphors gathered in the study ought to be expressions of a single underlying (and, somehow, temporally transcendent) “concept” rather than being individual literary creations, with perhaps some cases where literary dependence is a factor. To DiFransico's credit, this latter, literary mode of explanation, which in my view makes better sense of the material, is the direction that is pursued in many of the detailed discussions, but the setting of these discussions within a larger framework of CMT produces a tension that is not entirely resolved in the book. This is particularly evident in the sections dealing with Qumran and New Testament texts, where DiFransico seems to argue that the isolated biblical metaphors treated earlier in the study actually shaped the ritual practices involving water mentioned in these later texts, even though her own exegetical analyses of select Qumran and New Testament passages reveal little direct dependence on the earlier texts.

This book is a useful gathering together of the relevant texts and will be worth consulting by anyone working on this topic in the future. However, its broader historical claims, especially pertaining to the origins of the later washing and sprinkling rituals, are not well founded, and so should not be allowed to obscure the careful textual analyses that form the heart of the book.