The young men who had grown up with him: See verse 8.

Said to him and said to you are literally “said to him saying” and “said to you saying” respectively.

Your father made our yoke heavy, but do you lighten it for us is a reference to verse 4.

For reasons of English style, Good News Translation substitutes the pronoun “They” for the words the young men who had grown up with him and the pronoun “them” for the words this people who said to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but do you lighten it for us.’ This certainly simplifies the structure and serves to resolve the problem of one of the embedded quotations in this verse.

The words thus shall you say to them refer to what follows. New Jerusalem Bible says “This is the right thing to say to them.” For some translators these words are an unnecessary intrusion into the direct discourse of the verse since they seem to say the same thing as Thus shall you speak to this people, which introduces the quotation earlier in the verse. If a literal rendering of the Hebrew structure is unnatural in the receptor language, then these words may be omitted.

My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins: The words that the young men tell Rehoboam to speak are in the form of a proverb. The general sense is clear: the easiest measure that Rehoboam will impose on the people will be far worse than the hardest measures to which his father subjected them. Compare Contemporary English Version: “Compared to me, my father was weak.”

Little finger translates a single Hebrew word that occurs in the Old Testament only here and in the parallel text in 2 Chr 10.10. It comes from the root meaning “little” but the exact meaning here is uncertain. It has traditionally been translated little finger, but it may mean “penis.” Some interpreters who follow the traditional rendering suggest that it may be a euphemism for the male sexual organ.

Loins translates a Hebrew noun that refers to the area of the body which unites the upper and lower parts of the body. Translations include loins (the hip-area), “waist” (New International Version, De Vries), “arm” (Bible en français courant, Parole de Vie), “thighs” (Moffatt), and “body” (New American Bible).

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on 1-2 Kings, Volume 1. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2008. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .