101 And Rehoboam went to Shechem, where all Israel had come together to make him king. 2 And when Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, had news of it, (for he was in Egypt where he had gone in flight from King Solomon,) he came back from Egypt. 3 And they sent for him; and Jeroboam and all Israel came to Rehoboam and said, 4 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. 5 And he said to them, Come to me again after three days. So the people went away. 6 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? 7 And they said to him, If you are kind to this people, pleasing them and saying good words to them, then they will be your servants for ever. 8 But he gave no attention to the opinion of the old men, but went to the young men of his generation who were waiting before him. 9 And he said to them, What is your opinion? What answer are we to give to this people who have said to me, Make less the weight of the yoke which your father put on us? 10 And the young men of his generation said to him, This is the answer to give to the people who came to you saying, Your father put a hard yoke on us, but will you make it less; say to them, My little finger is thicker than my father's body; 11 If my father put a hard yoke on you, I will make it harder: my father gave you punishment with whips, but I will give you blows with snakes.
12 So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day, as the king had given orders, saying, Come to me again on the third day. 13 And the king gave them a rough answer. So King Rehoboam gave no attention to the suggestion of the old men, 14 But gave them the answer put forward by the young men, saying, My father made your yoke hard, but I will make it harder; my father gave you punishment with whips, but I will give it with snakes. 15 So the king did not give ear to the people; for this came about by the purpose of God, so that the Lord might give effect to his word which he had said by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. 16 And when all Israel saw that the king would give no attention to them, the people in answer said to the king, What part have we in David? what is our heritage in the son of Jesse? every man to your tents, O Israel; now see to your house, David. So all Israel went to their tents. 17 But Rehoboam was still king over those of the children of Israel who were living in the towns of Judah. 18 Then Rehoboam sent Adoniram, the overseer of the forced work; and he was stoned to death by all Israel. And King Rehoboam went quickly and got into his carriage to go in flight to Jerusalem. 19 So Israel was turned away from the family of David to this day.
111 And Rehoboam came to Jerusalem, and got together the men of Judah and Benjamin, a hundred and eighty thousand of his best fighting-men, to make war against Israel and get the kingdom back for Rehoboam. 2 But the word of the Lord came to Shemaiah, the man of God, saying, 3 Say to Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all Israel in Judah and Benjamin, 4 The Lord has said, You are not to go to war against your brothers: let every man go back to his house, for this thing is my purpose. So they gave ear to the words of the Lord and were turned back from fighting against Jeroboam.
5 Now Rehoboam kept in Jerusalem, building walled towns in Judah. 6 He was the builder of Beth-lehem and Etam and Tekoa 7 And Beth-zur and Soco and Adullam 8 And Gath and Mareshah and Ziph 9 And Adoraim and Lachish and Azekah 10 And Zorah and Aijalon and Hebron, walled towns in Judah and Benjamin. 11 And he made the walled towns strong, and he put captains in them and stores of food, oil, and wine. 12 And in every town he put stores of body-covers and spears, and made them very strong. And Judah and Benjamin were his.
13 And the priests and Levites who were in all Israel came together to him from every part of their country. 14 For the Levites gave up their living-places and their property, and came to Judah and Jerusalem; for Jeroboam and his sons had sent them away, not letting them be priests to the Lord; 15 And he himself made priests for the high places, and for the images of he-goats and oxen which he had made. 16 And after them, from all the tribes of Israel, all those whose hearts were fixed and true to the Lord, the God of Israel, came to Jerusalem to make offerings to the Lord, the God of their fathers. 17 So they went on increasing the power of the kingdom of Judah, and made Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, strong for three years; and for three years they went in the ways of David and Solomon. 18 And Rehoboam took as his wife Mahalath, the daughter of Jerimoth, the son of David and of Abihail, the daughter of Eliab, the son of Jesse; 19 And she had sons by him, Jeush, Shemariah, and Zaham. 20 And after her he took Maacah, the daughter of Absalom; and she had Abijah and Attai and Ziza and Shelomith by him. 21 Maacah, the daughter of Absalom, was dearer to Rehoboam than all his wives and his servant-wives: (for he had eighteen wives and sixty servant-wives, and was the father of twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters.) 22 Rehoboam made Abijah, the son of Maacah, chief and ruler among his brothers, for it was his purpose to make him king. 23 And in his wisdom he had his sons stationed in every walled town through all the lands of Judah and Benjamin; and he gave them a great store of food, and took wives for them.
121 Now when Rehoboam's position as king had been made certain, and he was strong, he gave up the law of the Lord, and all Israel with him. 2 Now in the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak, king of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem, because of their sin against the Lord, 3 With twelve hundred war-carriages and sixty thousand horsemen: and the people who came with him out of Egypt were more than might be numbered: Lubim and Sukkiim and Ethiopians. 4 And he took the walled towns of Judah, and came as far as Jerusalem. 5 Now Shemaiah the prophet came to Rehoboam and the chiefs of Judah, who had come together in Jerusalem because of Shishak, and said to them, The Lord has said, Because you have given me up, I have given you up into the hands of Shishak. 6 Then the chiefs of Israel and the king made themselves low and said, The Lord is upright. 7 And the Lord, seeing that they had made themselves low, said to Shemaiah, They have made themselves low: I will not send destruction on them, but in a short time I will give them salvation, and will not let loose my wrath on Jerusalem by the hand of Shishak. 8 But still they will become his servants, so that they may see how different my yoke is from the yoke of the kingdoms of the lands. 9 So Shishak, king of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem and took away all the stored wealth of the house of the Lord and the king's house: he took everything away, and with the rest the gold body-covers which Solomon had made. 10 And in their place King Rehoboam had other body-covers made of brass and gave them into the care of the captains of the armed men who were stationed at the door of the king's house. 11 And whenever the king went into the house of the Lord, the armed men went with him taking the body-covers, and then took them back to their room. 12 And when he made himself low, the wrath of the Lord was turned back from him, and complete destruction did not come on him, for there was still some good in Judah.
13 So King Rehoboam made himself strong in Jerusalem and was ruling there. Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he became king, and he was ruling for seventeen years in Jerusalem, the town which the Lord had made his out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there; and his mother's name was Naamah, an Ammonite woman. 14 And he did evil because his heart was not true to the Lord. 15 Now the acts of Rehoboam, first and last, are they not recorded in the words of Shemaiah the prophet and Iddo the seer? And there were wars between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days. 16 And Rehoboam went to rest with his fathers, and was put into the earth in the town of David; and Abijah his son became king in his place.
