So Jacob went over to his father Isaac, who felt him and said, “The voice is Jacob’s, but the hands are Esau’s.”

“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.”

“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.”

But even the swiftest cannot get away. Even the strongest cannot escape. There in the north by the Euphrates River they stumble and fall in defeat.

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’?”

The young advisers with whom Rehoboam 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.’ Say this to them: ‘I am a lot harsher than my father!

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’?”

The young advisers with whom Rehoboam 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’ – say this to them: ‘I am a lot harsher than my father!

(8:23) The gloom will be dispelled for those who were anxious. In earlier times he humiliated the land of Zebulun, and the land of Naphtali; but now he brings honor to the way of the sea, the region beyond the Jordan, and Galilee of the nations.