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since Jonathan Klawans’s work on the distinction between moral and ritual impurity, the boundary that scholars have drawn between these two ‘models’ of Israelite thinking is becoming far more defined than it probably was in the experience of the Israelite community. Barton attempts to soften this line, arguing that ‘the language of impurity is constant all along the spectrum: there is no specific point at which we pass clearly from ritual to moral’ (p. 199). From a theological ethicist’s point of view, this is a welcome correction, because the notion of impurity—whether ritual or moral—is, in Barton’s words, ‘a way of ordering the moral world’ (p. 204). To that end, the removal of impurity is similar to God’s forgiveness in its effect: both constitute a return to ‘an original state’ (p. 208). The final three chapters contend with ‘classic’ subjects of debate in Old Testament ethics: divine retribution, suffering and theodicy, and the moral character of God. These topics are fittingly at the end of the book because by this time Barton has undermined several of the rigid dichotomies which inform most arguments in these debates. Those wholly committed to divine command theory will be challenged, for instance, by Barton’s presentation of how the Old Testament texts convey ‘both an automatic and an interventionist way of understanding the nexus between guilt and punishment’ (p. 217). There is also the sticking-point Barton raises for those who side wholly with the Psalmist’s stance that suffering in the Old Testament is an evil to be defeated. As Barton outlines, in both Job and Proverbs the Old Testament also proposes that suffering can be formative. Finally, those who argue that the ‘Old Testament God’ is a capricious, irrational tyrant will be challenged by the many texts Barton puts forth that complicate this view. As it turns out, the authors of the Old Testament overwhelmingly affirm God’s goodness, however difficult they find it to justify at times. In the opinion of this reviewer, Barton’s work here specifically makes the ancient author’s role as agent in the depiction of God far more interesting and multi-dimensional than is usually presupposed. Throughout this book, Barton puts forth clear and careful arguments for why ‘the gap between ancient Israelite thinking and early philosophy is not so great as is commonly supposed’ (p. 274). By the end the reader will be left with a sense of the Old Testament as an anthology of ethics as much as it is an anthology of genres. What is clear is that neither God nor Israel in Barton’s presentation is a simple subject with which to contend. This is mainly owed to Barton’s subtle theological point that, even with the most robust and explicit of commands which ground the Old Testament’s ethics, ‘there is a far stronger element of dialogue between God and Israel than is commonly imagined’ (p. 144). This is an important book for anyone who has a stake in such a statement.