5Rehoboam answered, “Come back to me in three days.” So the people went away.

6Then King Rehoboam consulted the elders who had served his father Solomon during his lifetime. “How would you advise me to answer these people?” he asked.

7They replied, “If you will be kind to these people and please them and give them a favorable answer, they will always be your servants.”

8But Rehoboam rejected the advice the elders gave him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him and were serving him.9He asked them, “What is your advice? How should we answer these people who say to me, ‘Lighten the yoke your father put on us’?”

10The young men who had grown up with him replied, “Tell the people who have said to you, ‘Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter’—tell them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father's waist.11My father laid on you a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.’”

12Three days later Jeroboam and all the people returned to Rehoboam, as the king had said, “Come back to me in three days.”13The king answered them harshly. Rejecting the advice of the elders,14he followed the advice of the young men and said, “My father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.”15So the king did not listen to the people, for this turn of events was from God, to fulfill the word the LORD had spoken to Jeroboam son of Nebat through Ahijah the Shilonite.

16When all Israel saw that the king refused to listen to them, they answered the king:
“What share do we have in David,
what part in Jesse's son?
To your tents, O Israel!
Look after your own house, O David!”
So all the Israelites went home.17But as for the Israelites who were living in the towns of Judah, Rehoboam still ruled over them.

18King Rehoboam sent out Adoniram,Hebrew Hadoram, a variant of Adoniram who was in charge of forced labor, but the Israelites stoned him to death. King Rehoboam, however, managed to get into his chariot and escape to Jerusalem.19So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day.

2But this word of the LORD came to Shemaiah the man of God:3“Say to Rehoboam son of Solomon king of Judah and to all the Israelites in Judah and Benjamin,4‘This is what the LORD says: Do not go up to fight against your brothers. Go home, every one of you, for this is my doing.’” So they obeyed the words of the LORD and turned back from marching against Jeroboam.

13The priests and Levites from all their districts throughout Israel sided with him.14The Levites even abandoned their pasturelands and property, and came to Judah and Jerusalem because Jeroboam and his sons had rejected them as priests of the LORD.15And he appointed his own priests for the high places and for the goat and calf idols he had made.16Those from every tribe of Israel who set their hearts on seeking the LORD, the God of Israel, followed the Levites to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to the LORD, the God of their fathers.17They strengthened the kingdom of Judah and supported Rehoboam son of Solomon three years, walking in the ways of David and Solomon during this time.