Communication through language is an important area of study and has been examined by specialists from a variety of disciplines.

Caird, Dean Ireland 's Professor of Exegesis of Holy Scripture at Oxford, has written an exceptional and well-organized compilation of the best of such study, both past and present.

He has provided invaluable guidance for the study and understanding of the Bible by explaining how verbal messages are formed, what they "say" in writing, and how they are to be understood.Drawing upon the results of modern linguistic and communications scholarship, and upon the still valid methods of rhetorical and exegetical study, Caird provides a synthesis for hermeneutics.

Beginning with the uses and abuses of language, Caird goes on to discuss the nature and structure of meaning, the relations between Hebrew idiom and biblical thought, and the problems of translation, discussions which form the opening or "general" section of the book.

The central section is entitled "metaphor," under which Caird treats literal and non-literal meanings (and valid distinctions between them), comparative language in metaphors, similes, and anthropomorphisms, concluding with a treatment of linguistic awareness. Finally, he devotes a section to language in relation to history, to myth, and to eschatology.