Jochanan ben Zakkai, the head not of the State but of the community, appears to have acted as a shield from a political point of view. His kindly and gentle disposition, in which he resembled Hillel, he displayed even to the heathens. It is related of him that he always greeted them in a friendly manner. Such friendliness offers a striking contrast to the hatred felt by the Zealots towards the heathens, both before and after the revolution, which increased after the destruction of the Temple. The verse (Proverbs xiv. 34), "The kindness of the nations is sin," was taken literally by the people of that time, and was specially applied to the heathen world. "The heathens may do ever so much good, yet it is accounted to them as sin, for they do it only to mock us." Jochanan alone explained this verse in a sense expressive of true humanity: "As the burnt-offering atones for Israel, so mercy and kindness atone for the heathen nations." This kindliness of Jochanan may have contributed to the result that, notwithstanding the fresh outbreaks amongst the Jews in Cyrene and Egypt, which the Emperors Vespasian and Titus had to put down, they did not persecute the Jews in any extraordinary degree. It is expressly stated in ancient records that the Roman authorities removed the contempt which formerly attached to the Jews, and that the murder of a Jew was punished by death. The personality of Jochanan may have served them as a guarantee for the peaceful disposition of the mother-country. Hope alone gave to him and his circle of fellow-pupils and disciples fresh courage, the hope or rather the assurance that Israel should not be lost. The dreary present did not veil from him the promised and brighter future. The present was in truth sufficiently overcast. The pasture lands had been taken away from those who had survived the national disasters, and given to strangers. Thereby those who had formerly been rich had fallen into poverty. The very poorest had to pay the Jews' tax (Fiscus Judaicus). The land, which before the war had been so flourishing, was strewn with ruins. Every joy had departed from Israel; even weddings were performed in a silent manner. Jochanan described the comfortless position of the times in an address to the people. He once saw a Jewish maiden of a rich house, picking up a scanty nourishment of barley-corn from amongst the horses' hoofs. At this he exclaimed, "Unhappy nation, you would not serve God, and therefore you must serve foreign nations; you would not offer half a shekel for the Temple, and therefore you must pay thirty times as much to the State of your new enemies; you refused to keep the roads and paths in order for the pilgrims, and, therefore, you must now support the watch-lodges in the vineyards, which the Romans have seized."