Called by the angel of the LORD to deliver Israel from Midian, Gideon — the least of the smallest clan of Manasseh — doubted. He asked the LORD for a sign: 'I am putting a fleece of wool on the threshing floor; if there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will deliver Israel by my hand, as you have said.'
It was so. The next morning Gideon wrung from the fleece a bowl full of water — the ground around it dry. He asked once more, in case: 'Let me test, I pray, just once more with the fleece — let it now be dry on the fleece alone, and on all the ground let there be dew.' That night God did so — the fleece was dry, the dew was on the ground. The 'fleece of Gideon' has been the traditional image of asking God for confirmatory signs ever since, and is a recurring image in Marian theology (the fleece on which the dew descended is read as a type of Mary receiving the Incarnation).