Verse 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.

Referenced Verses

• Exod 1:13-14 : 13 And they gave the children of Israel even harder work to do: 14 And made their lives bitter with hard work, making building-material and bricks, and doing all sorts of work in the fields under the hardest conditions.
• Exod 2:23 : 23 Now after a long time the king of Egypt came to his end: and the children of Israel were crying in their grief under the weight of their work, and their cry for help came to the ears of God.
• 1 Sam 8:11-18 : 11 And he said, This is the sort of king who will be your ruler: he will take your sons and make them his servants, his horsemen, and drivers of his war-carriages, and they will go running before his war-carriages; 12 And he will make them captains of thousands and of fifties; some he will put to work ploughing and cutting his grain and making his instruments of war and building his war-carriages. 13 Your daughters he will take to be makers of perfumes and cooks and bread-makers. 14 He will take your fields and your vine-gardens and your olive-gardens, all the best of them, and give them to his servants. 15 He will take a tenth of your seed and of the fruit of your vines and give it to his servants. 16 He will take your men-servants and your servant-girls, and the best of your oxen and your asses and put them to his work. 17 He will take a tenth of your sheep: and you will be his servants. 18 Then you will be crying out because of your king whom you have taken for yourselves; but the Lord will not give you an answer in that day.
• 1 Kgs 4:20 : 20 Judah and Israel were as great in number as the sand by the seaside, and they took their food and drink with joy in their hearts.
• 1 Kgs 4:25 : 25 So Judah and Israel were living safely, every man under his vine and his fig-tree, from Dan as far as Beer-sheba, all the days of Solomon.
• 1 Kgs 5:15 : 15 Then he had seventy thousand for the work of transport, and eighty thousand stone-cutters in the mountains;
• 1 Kgs 9:22 : 22 But Solomon did not put the children of Israel to forced work; they were the men of war, his servants, his captains, and his chiefs, captains of his war-carriages and of his horsemen.
• 1 Kgs 12:4 : 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.
• Isa 47:6 : 6 I was angry with my people, I put shame on my heritage, and gave them into your hands: you had no mercy on them; you put a cruel yoke on those who were old;
• Matt 11:29-30 : 29 Take my yoke on you and become like me, for I am gentle and without pride, and you will have rest for your souls; 30 For my yoke is good, and the weight I take up is not hard.
• Matt 23:4 : 4 They make hard laws and put great weights on men's backs; but they themselves will not put a finger to them.
• 1 John 5:3 : 3 For loving God is keeping his laws: and his laws are not hard.