About those fleeces that you put out…

The need for two signs of the fleece may point to Gideon’s ineptitude. According to the natural order of things, the wool fleece would have absorbed the moisture from the dew so that when the morning came the sun would have dried the ground, but the fleece would have naturally remained damp. No doubt realizing his blunder, Gideon requests a second sign that would require a miracle. Things are not boding well for Israel’s new leader. All of these subtleties of the text and the broader context should probably give contemporary readers pause before drawing in the fleecing test as a paradigm for discovering God’s will today.—David J. H. Beldman, Judges, Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming)