2 Chronicles 10:4

10:4 “Your father made us work too hard! ¹  Now if you lighten the demands he made and don’t make us work as hard, we will serve you.” ² 

2 Chronicles 21:12

21:12 Jehoram ³  received this letter from Elijah the prophet: “This is what the Lord God of your ancestor David says: ‘You ⁴  have not followed in the footsteps ⁵  of your father Jehoshaphat and of ⁶  King Asa of Judah,

2 Chronicles 7:17-18

7:17 You must serve me as your father David did. Do everything I commanded and obey my rules and regulations. ⁷  7:18 Then I will establish your dynasty, ⁸  just as I promised your father David, ‘You will not fail to have a successor ruling over Israel.’ ⁹ 

2 Chronicles 10:9-10

10:9 He asked them, “How do you advise me to respond to these people who said to me, ‘Lessen the demands your father placed on us’?” ¹⁰  10:10 The young advisers with whom Rehoboam ¹¹  had grown up said to him, “Say this to these people who have said to you, ‘Your father made us work hard, but now lighten our burden’ ¹²  – say this to them: ‘I am a lot harsher than my father! ¹³ 

2 Chronicles 16:3

16:3 “I want to make a treaty with you, like the one our fathers made. ¹⁴  See, I have sent you silver and gold. Break your treaty with King Baasha of Israel, so he will retreat from my land.” ¹⁵ 

2 Chronicles 21:13

21:13 but have instead followed in the footsteps of the kings of Israel. You encouraged the people of Judah and the residents of Jerusalem to be unfaithful to the Lord, just as the family of Ahab does in Israel. ¹⁶  You also killed your brothers, members of your father’s family, ¹⁷  who were better than you.

2 Chronicles 2:14

2:14 whose mother is a Danite and whose father is a Tyrian. ¹⁸  He knows how to work with gold, silver, bronze, iron, stones, and wood, as well as purple, violet, white, and crimson fabrics. He knows how to do all kinds of engraving and understands any design given to him. He will work with your skilled craftsmen and the skilled craftsmen of my lord David your father.

¹ tn Heb “made our yoke burdensome.”

² tn Heb “but you, now, lighten the burdensome work of your father and the heavy yoke which he placed on us, and we will serve you.” In the Hebrew text the prefixed verbal form with vav (וְנַעַבְדֶךָ, vÿna’avdekha, “and we will serve you”) following the imperative (הָקֵל, haqel, “lighten”) indicates purpose/result. The conditional sentence used in the present translation is an attempt to bring out the logical relationship between these forms.

³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Jehoram) has been specified in the translation for clarity and for stylistic reasons.

⁴ tn Heb “Because you…” In the Hebrew text this lengthy sentence is completed in vv. 14-15. Because of its length and complexity (and the tendency of contemporary English to use shorter sentences), the translation has divided it up into several English sentences.

⁵ tn Heb “walked in the ways.”

⁶ tn Heb “in the ways of.”

⁵ tn Heb “As for you, if you walk before me, as David your father walked, by doing all which I commanded you, [and] you keep my rules and my regulations.”

⁷ tn Heb “I will establish the throne of your kingdom.”

⁸ tn Heb “there will not be cut off from you a man ruling over Israel.”

⁹ tn Heb “Lighten the yoke which your father placed on us.”

¹¹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Rehoboam) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹² tn Heb “Your father made our yoke heavy, but make it lighter upon us.”

¹³ tn Heb “My little one is thicker than my father’s hips.” The referent of “my little one” is not clear. The traditional view is that it refers to the little finger (so NEB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT). As the following statement makes clear, Rehoboam’s point is that he is more harsh and demanding than his father.

¹³ tn Heb “[May there be] a covenant between me and you [as there was] between my father and your father.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “so he will go up from upon me.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “and you walked in the way of the kings of Israel and caused Judah and the residents of Jerusalem to commit adultery, like the house of Ahab causes to commit adultery.”

¹⁶ tn Heb “the house of your father.”

¹⁷ tn Heb “a son of a woman from the daughters of Dan, and his father a man of Tyre.”