to Gideon at the first interview. Gideon lists his conditions of impossibility and requests a sign. He goes to obtain food, a quantity typical of near-Eastern hospitality. The meal he prepares for the Angel of the Lord (Lindsey notes Gideon probably hoped to take the leftovers home to his family ) is consumed in a flash of fire. There is the sign he requested. One may well believe Gideon could have begun his campaign without offering the food and the Angel of the Lord would not have missed it. At this point in the history of Israel God is concerned more with obtaining obedience than with reassuring His people, and provides reassurance only to obtain obedience.
The cult of Ba'al was actually something of a newcomer to the region itself, preceding Yahwehism by only a few centuries.
"By the time Israel entered Canaan, most of the earlier El cults had been displaced by the strong fertility cults of Ba'al and Asherah or Astarte. . . .Ba'al, however, being an agricultural fertility god, had no interest in desert regions where he could not function. Thus the original El worship may have continued unrivalled far back in the desert, where Jethro, the priest of Midian, lived."
Thus, from the early days even before the Exodus there were conflicts between the different cults, gods, and their adherents. It is likely that the Israelites accepting sacrifices from Jethro, surnamed Re'u'el or companion of El, meant that he had maintained worship of the true God out in the desert while others in the fertile valleys had reverted to the paganism of Ba'al and all the debauchery that accompanied his religion. It is also likely that as a descendent of Abraham through Keturah Jethro had originally learned the worship of El.
However, even worship of El had become corrupted among the Ugaritic people, their version having "ruled over the pantheon of his sons, who trembled before him, whereas Yahweh tolerated no god besides him." Yet, even Y...