Bill Brown has rightfully taken his place among the most gifted scholars presently working in Old Testament studies. Brown's work pace is amazing, his literary output prodigious – worthy of a Walter Brueggemann – the present volume being at least his fourth or fifth monograph. This tally does not include a number of commentaries, numerous articles and essays, and three or four edited collections. But it is not only his work pace that is ‘Brueggemannesque’: Brown's writing and rhetorical flair are also reminiscent of Brueggemann in their immediacy, evocativeness, and impact. Even more impressive, this book stands to make an impact on Psalms-scholarship not unlike Brueggemann's own seminal contributions to the study of the Psalms (especially his alternative typology of orientation-disorientation-new orientation). These comparisons are quite serendipitous as Brown moved to fill the Old Testament position at Columbia Theological Seminary, previously held by Brueggemann.

Brown has written on a number of topics with great effect and it is to our good fortune that he has now set his sights on the Psalms. In Seeing the Psalms, Brown advocates a brilliant but rather simple thesis: the psalms qua poetry are replete with metaphors and these metaphors deserve as much attention and as thorough an investigation as the Psalms’ other aspects (e.g., parallelism, metre [if it exists], cultic significance, form-types, place in Israelite religion, etc.), each of which has received intense if not exhaustive scrutiny. As obvious as it seems, the thesis is rather novel: thoroughgoing studies of metaphor are still few and far between in biblical studies, and Brown's is the first monograph devoted exclusively to analysing them throughout the Psalter as a whole. Given this hole in previous scholarship, Brown's work is to a large degree the first of its kind. The standard he has set is impressive; the bar for subsequent studies is set high.

After an introduction that introduces the poetics of psalmic metaphor and imagination, and which also lays some groundwork and theory in image and metaphor analysis, Brown offers chapters on particular metaphors or metaphor-complexes. His first two chapters deal with the metaphor of refuge (God) and the metaphor of pathway (ethics), respectively. After these seminal and foundational chapters, Brown proceeds to a study of the tree metaphor (chapter 3), solar imagery and its connection to Torah (chapter 4), water imagery (chapter 5), animal imagery (chapter 6), imagery relating to God's body and roles (chapter 7), and what might be termed ‘impersonal’ imagery (light, shield, shade/shadow, mountain, fountain, portion and cup; chapter 8). He concludes with a metaphorical analysis of Psalm 139 and reflections on a theology of prayer and poesis. Simply put, there is much to be celebrated in this book. Brown has given us much food for thought. Space allows me to only lift up a few highlights, after which I will discuss a few questions I had about the book.

First, Brown is to be commended for considering non-textual sources in image and metaphor analysis. The book contains 21 well-chosen illustrations, but Brown cites many more. In this respect he is following the lead of Othmar Keel and the ‘Fribourg School’ which has consistently and almost single-handedly shown the guild of biblical scholars that we ignore ancient art to our own interpretive peril. Metaphors are imagistic and their imagery is often drawn from the natural world. Why not look at representations of that world from ancient times? Brown has done this and done it exceedingly well, though it must be admitted that each chapter's central metaphor could easily be the subject of an entire monograph.

Brown is also to be commended for his careful textual work. He does not shy away from even the most difficult psalms (e.g., Psalm 68) and the 45 pages of endnotes are replete with text-critical discussions that engage the best of critical scholarship and the gamut of ancient Versions. That Brown can do this kind of detailed work without losing sight of the larger metaphorical constructs he is after, and yet maintain a deft and oftentimes metaphorical style of writing (see, e.g., pp. 50, 103, 154, 191) is no small achievement and a rare gift in biblical studies these days. To put the point crassly: Brown's results are not smoke and mirrors or the result of a gifted rhetor. He is a gifted rhetor, but his rhetoric is built on solid textual evidence.

Brown is also commended for uniting what is so often put asunder. His first two chapters, for example, comprise a veritable theology of the Psalter and make a compelling case that the Psalter is not only about God (as is often stated to be the case; note the editorial placement of the royal psalms), but is also about ethics. Consider the following passage which well-exemplifies Brown's skill in writing on matters of theological, ethical, and moral (dare one even say, spiritual?) significance:. . .a metaphorical dyad, rather than a single all-embracing schema, governs the Psalter. ‘Refuge’ and ‘pathway’, I have argued, best capture the broad contours of the Psalter's metaphorical landscape. . .the Psalter is more an ellipse than a circle; it has two foci rather than a single center. . .Those who focus on the royal psalms, particularly in Book 4, identify divine rule as the central metaphor for God and, consequently, the Psalter's theological Mitte. The result, however, marginalises the role and theological implications of instruction, specifically tôrâ and wisdom. The Psalms codify a balance of concerns, as is evident at the outset. . .The Lord reigns and the Lord teaches; the psalmist renders praise and is instructed. That the Psalter is expressly instructive is confirmed by the ‘pathway’ metaphor. ‘Pathway’ and ‘refuge’ effectively integrate the cultic and the didactic and they provide, respectively, the mode and setting for faithful living, life directed ad deum and established coram deo. The psalmists seek God within the fray as much as they find themselves in God's presence beyond it. (pp. 48–49). This is just one of many passages that could be cited; virtually every page of the book contains similar passages.

Given the book's pioneering nature, there are points to question as well as celebrate. Some sections that are labelled ‘iconographical precedents’ do not, in fact, include iconography proper (e.g., p. 98). Surprisingly, Brown does not include iconographical illustration in the chapter on water metaphors, though to his credit he does discuss such later in the book (pp. 201ff.). Artistic analysis of the iconographical pieces included, while present here and there (e.g., p. 102), is slim, but this is probably appropriate. One of my biggest questions was why Brown seemed to distance himself from the so-called interaction perspective of metaphor (see esp. pp. 219–20 n. 41). Perhaps this distancing is more apparent than real since, as Brown notes, the interaction theory is still a dominant one in biblical and theological studies and he himself engages in ‘interactionist’ interpretation – and quite helpfully so – at several key junctures in the book (see esp. 94–7 on the sun and Torah).

These minor quibbles, along with the other questions raised in the book for this reviewer and for other readers, are due, no doubt, to the sheer vastness and richness of the Psalter as well as the innovative nature of Brown's book. Indeed, at several points in the book, Brown states that his study is only introductory, provisional, a scratching-of-the-surface. The deeps of the Psalms and their imagery support this humble posture (see p. 223, n. 110), and yet it must be said that, given the quality of Brown's work and his thorough knowledge of the Psalms, if his book is provisional, it is definitively so! There can be no doubt, that is, that future studies will return to Brown's work for years to come and it will be a starting point for many investigations to follow. He has put us all in his considerable debt.

Those concerned with the state of biblical studies in the face of the retirements of scholars the like of Walter Brueggemann, W. Sibley Towner, Patrick D. Miller, J. Gerald Janzen, James L. Mays and others can rest easy. Bill Brown stands ready to assume the mantle of the great theological exegetes who have gone before. In fact, he already has.