The Sign of the Fleece

³⁶ Then Gideon said to God, “In order to see whether you will deliver Israel by my hand, as you have said,

¹⁴ Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian; I hereby commission you.”^(A)

The Demand for a Sign

16 The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test Jesus^[a] they asked him to show them a sign from heaven.^(A)

⁹ Isaiah said, “This is the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do the thing that he has promised: Shall the shadow advance^[a] ten intervals, or shall it retreat ten intervals?”

¹⁷ Then he said to him, “If now I have found favor with you, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me.^{(A) 18} Do not depart from here until I come to you and bring out my present and set it before you.” And he said, “I will stay until you return.”

¹⁹ So Gideon went into his house and prepared a kid and unleavened cakes from an ephah of flour; the meat he put in a basket, and the broth he put in a pot and brought them to him under the oak and presented them.^{(B) 20} The angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the unleavened cakes and put them on this rock and pour out the broth.” And he did so.^(C)

Moses’s Miraculous Power

4 Then Moses answered, “But look, they may not believe me or listen to me but say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’ ”^{(A) 2} The Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.”^{(B) 3} And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw the staff on the ground, and it became a snake, and Moses drew back from it. ⁴ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Reach out your hand and seize it by the tail”—so he reached out his hand and grasped it, and it became a staff in his hand— ⁵ “so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.”

⁶ Again, the Lord said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” He put his hand into his cloak, and when he took it out, his hand was diseased, as white as snow.^{(C) 7} Then God said, “Put your hand back into your cloak”—so he put his hand back into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored like the rest of his body^(D)— ⁸ “If they will not believe you or heed the first sign, they may believe the second sign. ⁹ If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to you, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.”^(E)