7
"If you will be a servant to this people by answering them and speaking good words today," they replied, "then they will be your servants forever."
8
But Rehoboam ignored the advice the elders gave him and instead sought the counsel of the young advisors who had grown up with him and now served him.
9
"What do you advise?" he asked them. "How should we respond to these people who have said to me, ‘Lighten the workload your father demanded of us'?"
10
The young people who had grown up with him said to him, "This people said to you, ‘Your father made our workload heavy; lighten it for us!' Now this is what you should say to them: ‘My baby finger is thicker than my father's entire waist!
11
So if my father made your workload heavy, I'll make it even heavier! If my father disciplined you with whips, I'll do it with scorpions!'"