Balentine has forged new categories of analysis beyond our old critical pigeonholes. In the end, he has shown that prayer is neither a marginal activity undertaken after intellectual analysis nor an act of piety to fend off critical study . These prayer texts have required and permitted much hard, disciplined work in the long traditioning process. Now they offer to us an act of communication and a special world that refuses the voicelessness of technical society. In this world of Israel's faithful prayer and prayerful faith, the heavens are not empty, and the earth need not be mute.