Judges — Chapter 6

Israel did evil, so God delivered them into the hand of Midian for seven years. The recurring cycle: sin, servitude, penitence, salvation. Lapide: God uses foreign nations as scourges to correct His people; the Midianite oppression is a figure of the tyranny of sin and the devil over the soul that abandons God.

The Angel greets Gideon: \"The Lord is with thee, thou most valiant of men.\" He is threshing wheat in hiding from the Midianites — the humble instrument chosen by God in his own eyes smallest and most contemptible. Lapide: God habitually chooses the weak to confound the strong (1 Cor. 1:27).

Gideon asks for a sign. Lapide, following S. Thomas, Suarez, and Serarius: Gideon did not sin by asking for a sign, because he did so not from infidelity but from a pious desire to confirm his faith. The Apostle places Gideon in the catalogue of the heroes of faith (Heb. 11:32).

Gideon fears death on seeing the Angel face to face: \"I have seen the Angel of the Lord face to face.\" The Lord comforts him: \"Peace be to thee, fear not, thou shalt not die.\" Lapide: the presence of God's messenger brings at first holy fear, then consolation — the pattern of all true visitation of grace.

Gideon sets out the fleece and asks for dew on the fleece alone, all earth dry. Lapide: the fleece (vellus) signifies primarily the womb of the Virgin Mary, and the dew (ros) signifies the descent of the Word of God into that womb — the Incarnation. SS. Ambrose, Ephrem, Sophronius, and Proclus all call the Blessed Virgin \"the Fleece of Gideon.\"

There was dew only upon the fleece, and all the earth was dry. Lapide: the first sign — dew on fleece alone — is fulfilled in the Conception of the Virgin, when she alone received the Heavenly Dew (the Word) while all other women remained dry and incapable of such a miracle of grace. S. Bernard: \"What does the fleece of Gideon signify, but flesh assumed from the flesh of a Virgin without injury to her virginity?\"

The second sign: fleece dry, all earth moist. Lapide: this signifies the Birth of Christ, when the Word was poured out upon all the earth through the Virgin, who herself thereafter remained as it were empty and dry — virginity preserved in parturition. SS. Jerome, Ambrose, Bernard, Chrysologus are cited at length.