Ecclesiastes 12:4-10

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.