Catholic Commentary
The Two Signs of the Fleece
36Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have spoken,37behold, I will put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I’ll know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have spoken.”38It was so; for he rose up early on the next day, and pressed the fleece together, and wrung the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of water.39Gideon said to God, “Don’t let your anger be kindled against me, and I will speak but this once. Please let me make a trial just this once with the fleece. Let it now be dry only on the fleece, and on all the ground let there be dew.”40God did so that night; for it was dry on the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground.
Judges 6:36–40 records Gideon asking God for two miraculous signs involving a fleece to confirm his divine call to deliver Israel from Midianite oppression. God patiently grants both signs—first making dew soak only the fleece while the ground remains dry, then reversing it—demonstrating His confirmation of Gideon's mission and revealing His patience with human doubt grounded in genuine faith.
God does not rebuke Gideon for asking twice—He meets fearful faith with patient mercy, turning doubt into the threshold of obedience.
Commentary
Judges 6:36 — "If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have spoken" The conditional phrase is striking: God has already spoken clearly (6:14–16), and an angel of the Lord has already confirmed the call with miraculous fire (6:21). Gideon's "if" is therefore not ignorance but anxiety — the gap between hearing the word of God and trusting it with one's whole life. He is not disbelieving; he is afraid to believe too fully. The phrase "as you have spoken" is important: Gideon anchors his request in God's own prior promise. He is not inventing a test from whole cloth; he is asking that the already-given word be ratified in his experience. This is a model of a certain legitimate kind of petition: holding God to His word not out of presumption but out of yearning for confirmation.
Judges 6:37 — The first sign: wet fleece, dry ground The threshing floor is a liminal, public space — a place of harvest and communal life — making the sign all the more concrete and testable. The fleece itself is humble: raw wool, not a sacred object. Gideon asks for something that reverses the natural order: dew soaking into the fleece while the surrounding ground remains bone-dry. This inversion of the ordinary is precisely what marks divine action. The sign is not merely meteorological convenience; it is a deliberate miracle of distinction — the same logic that governed the plagues in Egypt, where Israel was spared while Egypt suffered. The "hand" motif (vv. 36–37) recurs throughout Judges as the instrument of God's delivering power, linking Gideon to the Exodus tradition.
Judges 6:38 — The sign fulfilled: a bowl full of water The detail of Gideon rising "early" echoes the patriarchal and Mosaic patterns of rising before dawn to meet God (cf. Gen 22:3; Ex 24:4). His wringing out a "bowl full of water" from the fleece gives the miracle tactile, physical confirmation — this is no dream or vision but verifiable, material fact. The abundance ("a bowl full") suggests divine generosity beyond the minimum requested: God not only meets the sign but surpasses it.
Judges 6:39 — The second sign: dry fleece, wet ground Gideon's apology — "Don't let your anger be kindled against me" — reveals his awareness that he is pressing beyond the normal boundaries of petition. And yet he asks again. The reversal of the sign (now the fleece is dry, the ground wet) is theologically significant: it prevents a purely naturalistic explanation. A fleece absorbing dew more readily than the ground might be explained by its fibrous texture; but a fleece remaining dry while all the earth is wet cannot. The doubled sign thus forms a logical pair that seals the impossibility of coincidence. Gideon's persistence here is read by the Fathers not as presumption but as the restlessness of a soul that deeply desires God's confirmation before staking his life — and the lives of Israel — on what he has heard.
Judges 6:40 — God does so God's compliance is unaccompanied by rebuke. He does not chasten Gideon for asking twice. This silence speaks: God's mercy is patient with the weakness of human faith, especially when that faith is oriented toward His own declared purpose. The narrative moves directly forward — there is no pause for Gideon's response, no extended prayer of thanksgiving recorded here. The sign has done its work, and the account presses on toward action. The reader is left with the image of the dry fleece on dew-soaked ground: a small, damp, wool-scented miracle in the pre-dawn darkness of Ophrah — a hinge on which history turns.
Catholic Commentary
The Catholic interpretive tradition has seen in the fleece of Gideon one of Scripture's most luminous types of the Virgin Mary and the Incarnation. The patristic reading — articulated by St. Peter Chrysologus (Sermon 140), elaborated by St. Bernard of Clairvaux in his Homilies in Praise of the Virgin Mother, and echoed in medieval liturgy — identifies the fleece as the womb of Mary and the dew as the Word of God descending silently and without violence into human flesh. Just as the dew saturated the fleece while the surrounding ground remained untouched, so the eternal Son of God assumed human nature in Mary's womb while the rest of creation remained, so to speak, undisturbed — a hidden, intimate mystery of divine condescension. The reversal of the second sign (dry fleece, wet ground) has been read as pointing to Mary's perpetual virginity: though immersed in the world of fallen humanity, she remained uniquely holy, set apart, the vas honorabile (CCC 495, 508).
More broadly, the passage teaches about God's pedagogy of faith. The Catechism notes that God adapts His revelation to human capacity (CCC 684), and this principle is operative here: the divine patience with Gideon's doubled request reflects what the tradition calls condescensio Dei — divine accommodation to human weakness. St. Thomas Aquinas observes that God is not dishonored by signs sought from humility and desire for certainty when one's life and the lives of others depend upon right action (ST II-II, q. 97, a. 4). The passage also illustrates the Catholic understanding of prayer as genuine dialogue: Gideon's bold, even nervous petitions are received and answered, affirming that human beings can bring their hesitations to God without pretending to a courage they do not yet possess. The threshing floor, a place of winnowing and purification, anticipates the testing of Israel that will come through Gideon's campaign.
For Today
Many Catholics today recognize themselves immediately in Gideon: they have heard the call — in prayer, in Scripture, in the voice of a confessor or spiritual director — and they believe it, yet still find themselves asking for one more confirmation before acting. This passage gives pastoral permission to that experience without endorsing permanent delay. Gideon asks twice, not twenty times; and after the second sign, he moves. The spiritual lesson is not that we should demand signs before every decision, but that honest vulnerability before God — naming our fear, asking for clarity, admitting we are not as brave as the call requires — is not faithlessness. It is the beginning of faith's education. Practically, a Catholic discerning a vocation, a significant moral decision, or a work of service might take courage from Gideon: bring the fear honestly to prayer, ask for the confirmation you need, watch attentively for God's answer — and then, when it comes, rise early and go. The one thing Gideon does not do is use the need for signs as a permanent excuse for inaction.
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