Ecclesiastes 12:1-11

¹While you are still young, keep thinking about God, who created you. Do that before you are old and you experience many troubles, during the years when you say “I no longer enjoy being alive.”

²When you become old, the light from the sun and moon and stars will seem dim to you, and it will seem that the rain clouds always return quickly after it rains.

³Then your arms that you use to protect MET your bodies will shake/tremble, and your legs that support MET your bodies will become weak. Many of your teeth that you use to grind/chew your food will fall out, and your eyes that you use to look out of windows will not see clearly.

⁴Your ears MET will not hear the noise in the streets, and you will not be able to hear clearly the sound of people grinding grain with millstones. You will be awakened in the morning by hearing the birds singing/chirping, but you will not be able to hear well the songs that ◄the birds/people► sing.

⁵You will be afraid to be in high places and afraid of dangers on the roads that you walk on. Your hair will become white like MET the flowers of almond trees. When you try to walk, you will drag yourself along like MET grasshoppers, and you will no longer desire to have sex. Then you will die and go to your eternal home, and people who will mourn for you will be in the streets.

⁶Think much about God now, because soon our lives will end, like MET silver chains or golden bowls that break easily, or like pitchers/jugs that are broken at the water fountain, or like broken pulleys at a well.

⁷Then our corpses will decay and become dirt again, and our spirits will return to God, the one who gave us our spirits.

⁸So I say again that it is difficult to understand why everything happens; everything is mysterious.

⁹I was considered to be a very wise man, and I taught the people many things. I assembled/collected and wrote down many proverbs, and I carefully thought about and studied them.

¹⁰I searched for the right words, and what I have written is reliable and true.

¹¹The things that I and other wise people say teach people what they should do; they are like SIM ◄goads/sharp sticks that people use to strike animals to direct where they should go►. They are like SIM nails that stick out of pieces of wood. They are given to us by God, who is like MET our shepherd.