Jonathan David Lawrence, in a scholarly monograph, discusses ritual bathing and washings/immersions in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Literature.
Jonathan David Lawrence, Washing in Water: Trajectories of Ritual Bathing in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2006)
VOCABULARY
The number of terms used to describe washing and the results of washing complicates the study of ritual washing in the Hebrew Bible. While there are several terms describing different forms of the act of washing or cleansing, there are even more options for describing purity, the state which develops from that act. The situation is even more complicated by figurative uses of largely unrelated terms, and the fact that major divisions of meaning exist within each group.
Terms of washing include washing of both people (רחץ) and objects (כבס), sprinkling or pouring (זרק and נזה), rinsing (שׁטף), and cleansing through washing (רוח). While רחץ and כבס account for most of the references to washing in the Hebrew Bible, the others do appear quite a few times, although sometimes the roots are used in a way that has very little to do with washing in either a literal or metaphorical sense. These terms all differ both in the type of washing described and the way in which washing was accomplished. Thus it will be more difficult to make any immediate generalizations about all washing in the Hebrew Bible.
On the other hand, there are two primary terms related to purity—to be or make pure and clean (טהר), and be sanctified (התקרשׁ). Even so, there are some other terms used as well for the process of cleansing or the state of purity. Some of them are used in a metaphorical sense, but none of them immediately involves water.