4. “Your father forced us to work very hard. Now, make it easier for us. Stop the heavy work that your father forced us to do and we will serve you.”
5. Rehoboam answered, “Come back to me in three days, and I will answer you.” So the people left.
6. There were some older men who had helped Solomon make decisions when he was alive. So King Rehoboam asked these men what he should do. He said, “How do you think I should answer the people?”
7. They answered, “If you are like a servant to them today, they will sincerely serve you. If you speak kindly to them, they will always work for you.”
8. But Rehoboam did not listen to the advice from the older men. He asked the young men who were his friends.
9. Rehoboam asked them, “The people said, ‘Give us easier work than your father gave us.’ How do you think I should answer them? What should I tell them?”
26-27. Jeroboam said to himself, “If the people keep going to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices at the Lord’S Temple, someday they will want to be ruled by their old masters. They will want to be ruled by King Rehoboam of Judah. And then they will kill me.”
28. So the king asked his advisors what to do. They gave him their advice, and King Jeroboam made two golden calves. He said to the people, “You don’t have to go to Jerusalem to worship anymore. Israel, these are the gods that brought you out of Egypt.”
29. King Jeroboam put one golden calf in Bethel and the other one in the city of Dan.
30. What a terrible sin this was, because the Israelites started going to the cities of Dan and Bethel to worship the calves.
31. Jeroboam also built temples at the high places and chose priests from among the different tribes of Israel. (He did not choose priests only from the tribe of Levi.)
32. Then King Jeroboam started a new festival that was like the festival in Judah, but it was on the 15th day of the eighth month. At this time the king offered sacrifices on the altar at Bethel. He and the priests he chose offered the sacrifices to the calves that he had set up at the high places he had made.