⁷ In reply, they told him, “If you will be kind to this people, please them, and speak appropriately to them with kind words, they’ll serve you forever.”

⁸ But Rehoboam^[a] ignored the counsel that his elder advisors had given him. Instead, he consulted the younger men who had grown up with him and worked for^[b] him. ⁹ As a result, he asked them, “What’s your advice, so we can give an answer to these people who have asked me, ‘Please lighten the burden that your father put on us’?”