Commentaria in Judices
Gedeon seems, then, from great confidence in God, and a mind exulting with joy (for the spirit of the Lord had now clothed him), to have asked these two signs for the glory of God, not so much for his own as for his fellow-soldiers, whom he was calling together by God’s command to himself and to this his war, to raise their faith and hope; that, namely, he might confirm by these divine signs those gradually flocking to him, and kindle them to a sure hope of victory; whence he asked this sign when the army was already assembled. So Cajetan, Salianus and Suarez. Again Gedeon seems to have been moved and impelled by God to ask these signs, for the signification of the mystery which was figured by them of Christ, of which soon more. For a like cause Moses asked of God a sign of his mission to Pharao, Exod. 4, and Ezechias a sign of his healing from sickness, Isaias 38:22. So Suarez, tome I On Religion, book I On Irreligiosity, chap. 2, and Lessius, book II On the Cardinal Virtues, chap. 45, doubt 1; a third excuse for Gedeon Suarez brings, and approves it above the others, himself as well as Serarius, namely that Gedeon asked this sign to remove from his mind every motion of doubt, even involuntary: for although he firmly believed God promising victory, yet he felt in so arduous a matter some motions of doubt and temptations of diffidence, which, to remove, and wholly to solidify and increase faith, he asked this sign. A fourth is brought by Dionysius the Carthusian, namely that he did indeed believe God promising victory, but feared lest this promise were conditional, if, namely, the Hebrews should serve God with their whole heart, and not absolute: wherefore he asks this sign, by which God might declare this promise to be absolute; Gedeon asked, then, a double sign, or one and the same inverted. For first he asked that dew should be on the fleece of the sheep alone, and on the rest of the ground dryness; but afterwards he asked that the fleece alone should be dry, and the rest of the ground dewy and moist.
But why did Gedeon ask this sign rather than any other? Literally, Arias thinks that by the fleece he indicated his own vileness and abjection, and unfitness for accomplishing this war; whence he asked dew, that is, grace, mercy, spirit and fortitude, to be infused into him by God for this. For in Hebrew gizza, that is, fleece, alludes to gazaz (for the letter zayin contains a daleth, and so contains the daleth that is in the name Gedeon), that is, to shear, to cut down, to cut off, as if to say: I, O Lord, am as a sheep’s fleece shorn, and cut down of all strength and powers; do thou then fill it with the dew of thy grace and fortitude, that, strengthened by it, I may dare to undertake so great a battle, and happily accomplish it.
Conversely, in the latter sign Arias supposes that the dew on the ground was a symbol of sweat and anxiety, as though Gedeon wished by this to be taught whether, without great labour and great slaughter of his own, there would be a vast slaughter and destruction of the Madianite enemies, as if he prayed: Let there be, O Lord, to the fleece, that is to me, dryness, quiet and ample room (for here the Hebrew choreb, that is, dryness, by metathesis customary in symbols alludes, so that choreb is rochab, that is, widening and enlargement): but to all the hostile remainder of the earth, namely the Madianites, let there be solicitude, anxiety, terror, commotion, dejection. And this the Hebrew tal, that is, dew, alludes to, which alludes to tul and talal, that is, to cast, to cast down. Arias thinks, therefore, that Gedeon understood by the fleece himself and his men, by the surrounding earth the Madianites, and that in the former sign by dew victory, but in the latter sweat, tears and calamity were portended.
But it seems hard that the same dew should here signify two contrary things, namely victory and calamity. Wherefore, more congruously both to the literal and the mystical sense, we shall say that the dew signifies the same in both, namely the grace and mercy of God, help, victory; that is, that Gedeon in the former sign asked for the fleece, that is for himself, the dew of divine help and fortitude to overcome the Madianites, while the rest of Judea was destitute of it, dry, afflicted and barren; in the latter asked that the same dew of fortitude, asked for himself in the former sign, be infused also into the other Jews his countrymen, especially his fellow-soldiers, that they might offer themselves with courage as companions to Gedeon for the so arduous fight with the Madianites.
Moreover he asked this sign in a fleece, first, because as a Shepherd of sheep he had this at hand and ready; second, because the fleece was an apt symbol of this victory. For the fleece is wool plucked and shorn from sheep. Of old they plucked the wool from sheep, to which plucking afterwards succeeded shearing. These, then, as Varro says, book II On Rural Affairs, chap. 11: “Fleeces some call vellumina; from whose name it may be observed that the plucking of wool was invented before the shearing. Who even now pluck, keep the sheep fasting three days before, because the roots of the wool hold less firmly when they are weak.” The same, book IV On the Latin Language: “To pluck (vellere),” he says, “whence they were, more causes are received, among which that the Palatine shepherds were wont to pluck wool from sheep before shearing was invented; whence fleeces are so called.” Isidore agrees with Varro, book XIX of the Origins, chap. 27: “Wool (lana),” he says, “is so called from tearing (laniare), that is, from plucking. Hence also fleece (vellus) is so called, because wool was formerly plucked, not sheared.”
By the symbol of the fleece, then, Gedeon tacitly intimates that the Madianites had shorn all the crops and shoots of Judea, as this fleece had been shorn from the sheep, and consequently that he asks that in turn he himself may in like manner by God’s help shear and strip the Madianites from Israel. Hence the name Gedeon in Hebrew signifies cutter-down, cutter-off, shearer, and alludes to gizza, that is, fleece shorn from a sheep.
You will ask secondly, what does the dew on the fleece, and soon on the ground, signify mystically?
I answer, allegorically the dew on the fleece is Christ in the Virgin. For dew signifies the gliding in of the Word into the Virgin and the incarnation, like dew on the fleece, secret, tranquil, chaste, sweet, spiritual, fruitful, without corruption of virginity, and without pain of childbirth. For the fleece is both the womb of the Virgin and the humanity of Christ conceived in the Virgin’s womb, into which the divinity insinuated itself like heavenly dew. Whence St. Ambrose, St. Ephrem, St. Sophronius, Proclus and others call and invoke the Blessed Virgin: “Fleece of Gedeon.” Hear St. Ambrose, serm. 9: “Mary,” he says, “is rightly compared to a fleece, who so conceived the Lord that she drew him in with her whole body, and did not suffer a rending of his body, but was soft for obedience, solid... Paul: “The shepherds watching by night deserved to hear: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will, and while they keep the sheep, they found the Lamb of God in the pure and cleanest fleece, which in the dryness of the whole earth was rained upon with heavenly dew.” Hence St. Bernard, serm. 2 on Missus est: “What,” he says, “does the fleece of Gedeon signify, which indeed is shorn from flesh; but without wound to the flesh is placed on the threshing-floor, and now the wool, now the floor, is bedewed with dew, but the flesh assumed from the flesh of the Virgin without loss of virginity? upon whom indeed, the heavens dropping down, the whole fullness of the divinity poured itself out; so that from this fullness we have all received, who truly without it are nothing but dry earth: to this Gedeonic deed also the prophetic saying seems beautifully enough to agree, where it is read: He shall come down like rain upon the fleece.”
The same, serm. on the Nativity of Mary: “Behold, O man, the counsel of God, acknowledge the counsel of the wise, the counsel of piety. About to water the threshing-floor with heavenly dew, he first poured out upon the whole fleece; about to redeem the human race, he conferred the whole price upon Mary.” The Church finally, in the very second antiphon of the first vespers of the Circumcision, so sings: “When thou wast born ineffably of a Virgin, then the Scriptures were fulfilled; like rain upon the fleece thou didst descend, to save the human race.”
Finally Blessed Peter Chrysologus, serm. 3 On the Annunciation: “The heavenly shower,” he says, “poured itself in gentle gliding into the virginal fleece, and the whole wave of divinity hid itself in the thirsty fleece of our flesh; until, pressed out through the gibbet of the cross, it poured itself out upon all lands in a rain of salvation,” etc.
More on this matter I said on Isaias 45:8, on those words: “Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above,” where I recounted nine analogies of dew and Christ.
Moreover the former sign was fulfilled in the conception of the Virgin; for then she alone conceived the heavenly dew, that is the divine Word, in her womb, the rest of the earth, that is the other women, remaining dry, and without part in this dew; the latter in her childbirth, for then, bringing forth Christ, she poured this dew upon the earth, and herself remained as it were empty and as it were dry.