Gideon

The Righteous Gideon, whose name means "destroyer", was a judge of Israel, son of Joash the Abiezrite, and appears in chapters 6 to 8 of the Book of Judges. He delivered the people from Midian with three hundred men.

As he was beating out wheat in the wine press, the Angel of the Lord appeared to him and commanded him to deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. Gideon gathered an army from the towns and asked God for a sign. First he placed a fleece of wool on the threshing floor and said: "If there is dew on the fleece only, and the ground is dry, then I shall know that you will deliver Israel by my hand, as you have said." The next morning he got up early, squeezed the fleece and wrung out enough water to fill a bowl. Then he asked that the fleece remain dry and that there be dew on the ground, and so it was. Then the warrior of Manasseh led an army of three hundred men to victory over the Midianites. The people wished to make him ruler, and his son and grandson after him, but he refused, because the Lord was their ruler. Yet he was a judge for forty years, and during that time the land had rest.

The Righteous Gideon is referred to in Ode 9 of the second canon for the Feast of the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple: "Let us all magnify the radiant cloud in which the Master of all descended as dew from heaven on the fleece" (Judges 6:37). He is also mentioned in Hebrews 11:32 among those "who through faith conquered kingdoms". He is commemorated on 26 November and on the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers.