1Rehoboam went to Shechem, because all the Israelites had gone to Shechem to make him king.

2Jeroboam, son of Nebat, was still in Egypt when he heard about this. (He had run away to Egypt to escape from King Solomon and was living there.)

3The Israelite leaders sent for him. Jereboam and all the Israelites went to talk with Rehoboam.

4“Your father placed a heavy burden on us,” they told him. “But now if you lighten the load your father imposed and the heavy demands he laid on us, we will serve you.”

5Rehoboam answered, “Come back in three days time.” So the people left.

6King Rehoboam asked for advice from the elders who had served his father Solomon when he was alive. “How do you advise me to reply to these people about this?” he asked.

7They replied, “If you treat these people well, and please them by speaking kindly to them, they will always serve you.”

8But Rehoboam dismissed the advice of the elders. He instead asked advice from the young men he had grown up with, those close to him.

9He asked them, “What response do you advise that we send back to these people who have told me, ‘Lighten the burden your father put on us’?”

10The young men who he had grown up with told him, “This is what you have to tell these people who said to you, ‘Your father made our burden heavy, but you should make it lighter.’ This is what you should answer them: ‘My little finger is thicker than my father's waist!

11My father placed a heavy burden on you, and I will make it even heavier. My father punished you with whips; I will punish you with scorpions.’”

12Three days later, Jeroboam and all the people returned to Rehoboam, because the king had told them, “Come back in three days time.”

13The king answered them sharply. Dismissing the advice of the elders,

14he replied using the advice of the young men. He said, “My father placed a heavy burden on you, and I will make it even heavier. My father punished you with whips; I will punish you with scorpions.”

15The king did not listen to what the people said, for this change in circumstances was from God, to fulfill what the Lord had told Jeroboam son of Nebat through Ahijah the Shilonite.

16When all the Israelites saw that the king wasn't listening to them, they told the king: “What share do we have in David, and what part do we have in the son of Jesse? Go home, Israel! You're on your own, house of David!” So all the Israelites went home.

17However, Rehoboam still ruled over the Israelites who lived in Judah.

18Then King Rehoboam sent out Hadoram, who was in charge of forced labor, ²⁶but the Israelites stoned him to death. King Rehoboam quickly jumped into his chariot and raced back to Jerusalem.

19As a result, Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day.