Oddly, it doesn't seem to have seriously alarmed the believers then. That it gets mentioned at all tells us they thought the event dramatic, worth taking note of as a warning. But it doesn't get mentioned again, and there is no hint that there are sudden defections or a downturn in converts.
I turn again to the clannish, tribal mentality of the people in NT Palestine, or indeed, just about anywhere in the world until quite recently in NW Europe and its colonies. In Middle Eastern tribes today, if you were too cheat the others thus, you might expect harsh reprisal. Not always death, certainly, but our modern sense of individuality was not present in them. Cheating the tribe was very, very dangerous.
I have mentioned before the focus that Jesus puts on this change of allegiances, and sometimes even describes it as the reason he has come. We are to leave our old loyalties, our old tribes and obligations, and become members of a new people. The Jews of the time would have had a clearer idea of what that entailed than we do in our more individualistic age.
