Bible in Basic English
"Your father put a hard yoke on us: if you will make the conditions under which your father kept us down less cruel, and the weight of the yoke he put on us less hard, then we will be your servants."
— 1 Kings 12:4, Bible in Basic English
“Thy father made our yoke grievous: now therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee.”
“Thy father made our yoke grievous: now therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee. ”
“"Your father made our yoke grievous: now therefore make you the grievous service of your father, and his heavy yoke which he put on us, lighter, and we will serve you."”
““Your father made us work too hard. Now if you lighten the demands he made and don’t make us work as hard, we will serve you.””
“Thy father laid a grievous yoke upon us: now, therefore, do thou take off a little of the grievous service of thy father, and of his most heavy yoke, which he put upon us, and we will serve thee.”
“Thy father made our yoke grievous: now therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee.”
And Rehoboam went to Shechem, where all Israel had come together to make him king,
And, hearing of it, Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who was still in Egypt, where he had gone in flight from Solomon, and was living there, came back to his town Zeredah, in the hill-country of Ephraim;
And all the men of Israel came to Rehoboam and said,
Your father put a hard yoke on us: if you will make the conditions under which your father kept us down less cruel, and the weight of the yoke he put on us less hard, then we will be your servants.
And he said to them, Go away for three days and then come back to me again. So the people went away.
Then King Rehoboam took the opinion of the old men who had been with Solomon his father when he was living, and said, In your opinion, what answer am I to give to this people?
And they said to him, If you will be a servant to this people today, caring for them and giving them a gentle answer, then they will be your servants for ever.