The Book of the Holy Rosary: Part I, Chapter VII. Scripture Types of the Third Joyful Mystery: The Fleece of Gideon; The Manna
1. Type—The fleece of Gideon.
Around the subject of the third joyful mystery, the birth into our lost world of the “long-waited-for Messias, the Prince,” and the “Desired of all Nations,” the types and figures of the old law congregate together with a richness and profusion, in which, however, we can see no possible cause for surprise, when we reflect that the Almighty has designed, in His wisdom and mercy, that the Mosaic Covenant should be, as St Augustine says, “Gravida Christo”—pregnant with Christ. God, as we may rejoice to repeat again and again, has intended that the old law should be the schoolmaster of the nations of the world to bring them to Christ; and as it is by its types and figures that it performs a very important portion of its duty in this respect, nothing can be judged more agreeable to the designs of God, than that the crowning event of the long-matured plan, the advent of the Eternal Son of God into our world as the Son of Mary, should be foreshadowed in almost innumerable types and figures; “for where the body is,” says our Lord, “thither will the eagles be gathered together” (Luke xvii. 37). The same truth, as we shall see in its proper place, applies equally to His sacrifice of Himself on the Cross; the types and figures of which will be found to be equally numerous and various. But to proceed with our proper subject, the particular manner in which the Mosaic Covenant has prefigured the Nativity of Jesus Christ from a Virgin Mother.
As the Christian people spread over the earth in their various nations and languages, with one unanimous voice proclaim and testify to the truth of Mary’s peerless prerogative, her inviolable virginity, inseparably associated with the birth of her Divine Infant, our object must be to show in what way the Mosaic Law has been made to reveal in its figurative method to future ages the special and peculiar glory of the New Covenant.
The Church sings in the vespers for the feast of the circumcision, “When Thou wast born after an unspeakable manner from a Virgin, then the Scriptures were fulfilled. Thou didst descend like the rain unto the fleece. We praise Thee, O our God.” The narrative here referred to occurs in the Book of Judges, and runs as follows:—“In the days of the Judges of Israel, Gideon, the son of Joas, was thrashing and winnowing the wheat by the wine-press, in the territory of the tribe of Manasses, to prepare to fly from before the face of the Madianites, when an Angel of the Lord appeared to him, and said, ‘The Lord is with thee, O most valiant of men.’” Gideon was directed by the Angel to destroy the altar of Baal, which stood on his father’s land, and to cut down his grove.
Gideon, fearing his father’s house, and the men of the city, went by night with ten men of his father’s house, and destroyed the altar, and cut down the grove.
The men of the city, in the morning, saw the grove cut down, and Baal’s altar overthrown, and it was told to them that Gideon had done this. Soon after this all Madian and Amalec assembled their people, and came and pitched their tents in the valley of Jezrahel But the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon, and he called together the house of Abiezer to follow him, and he sent messengers to all Manasses, and to the tribes of Aser, Zabulon, and Nepthali. And Gideon said to God, “If Thou wilt save Israel by my hand, as Thou hast said, I will put this fleece of wool on the floor; if there be dew on the fleece only, and it be dry on all the ground beside, I shall know that, by my hand, as Thou hast said, Thou wilt deliver Israel. And it was so. And rising before day, wringing the fleece, he filled a vessel with the dew. And he said again to God, Let not Thy wrath be kindled against me if I try once more, seeking a sign in the fleece. I pray that the fleece only may be dry, and all the ground wet with dew. And God did that night as he had requested; and it was dry on the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground” (Judges vi. 36).
The Book of Psalms foretells the manner of the miraculous birth of Jesus, by a reference to this very sign that was given to Gideon. “He shall come down as the dew unto the fleece, and as the drops of rain that distil upon the earth” (Ps. lxxi. 6). But the Cistercian Abbot, Amedeus, shall give us in his own words the explanation of the type. “The fleece,” he says, “is a figure of Mary; and the falling of dew first upon the fleece, signifies the conception and birth of Jesus, without detriment to the virginity of His Mother; while the subsequent falling of the dew on all the earth around, and not upon the fleece, signifies the Divine grace which Jesus afterwards communicated in the heavenly dew of His holy baptism to all the world; while Mary, by the privilege of her immaculate conception, in no way stood in any need of this grace,—the fleece alone remaining unmoistened, when all the earth besides was covered with the dew.”
“Hail, fleece of Gideon,” say also both St Ephrem and St Germanus, addressing themselves to Mary, “into which the dew from heaven fell noiselessly.” As Moses says in his canticle, “My speech shall distil as the dew, as a shower upon the herbs, and as drops upon the grass” (Deut. xxxii. 2).
2. The Type of the Manna which fell from Heaven, and which was laid up and preserved in the Golden Urn.
“I am the bread of life,” said Christ to the Jews; “your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever; and the bread which I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” (John vi.)
And St Paul writes referring to the passage in Exod. xvi. 33, and speaking generally of the Mosaic tabernacle, “After the second veil was the tabernacle called the holy of holies, containing the golden thurible, and the Ark of the Covenant, covered round about with gold on every side, in which were laid up the golden URN CONTAINING THE MANNA, the rod of Aaron which had blossomed, and the tables of the covenant” (Heb. ix. 3).
“Hail, Thou vessel made of purest gold!” exclaims St Germanus; “preserving Christ, the heavenly manna, the bread of life for all.” “Hail, full of grace,” writes St Ephrem, “Thou that art the golden urn, which preservest the manna from heaven.”
“Hail, O urn, beaten out of purest gold!” writes St John Damascene, “apart from every other vessel, in which the whole world receives the manna that has been given for it, the bread of life prepared in the fire of the Godhead itself.” “Urn of sinless mortal clay, In which the manna immortal lay; Destined in God’s prophetic page To be the life of a future age.
Glory, glory, glory to Thee, Mother of Immortality!”
— The Mosque of Mary (Caswall).