Ecclesiastes 12

₁Think about God who made you. Think of Him now while you are young, before bad days and difficult years come when you will say: ‘I do not like this time.’

₂Think about God while you can see the sun and the moon and the stars. Later you will not see them well. The sky will become dark to you. It will seem as if the dark clouds never go away after the rain. ₃The days will come when your hands will tremble and your legs become weak and bent and your teeth will fall out and you will not be able to chew your food. Your eyes will not see clearly. ₄You will stop talking because you will become hard of hearing and you will not hear the noise in the streets anymore. You will get up in the morning when the birds start to sing, but you will not hear them.

₅You will become afraid of high places and things that lie in your way. Your hair will become white like the flowers of an almond tree and you will get too tired to walk. You will lose all desire to have sex. The time will come for you to die and the people who mourn you will come together in the streets.

₆You must think about God before that day when your life will end like a silver cord that you used to get water from the water-well breaks, or like a golden bowl breaks, in which you poured water breaks. Your life will end like a water jar that breaks at the fountain, or a broken wheel at a water-well. ₇That is the time when you will die and go back to the earth and when your spirit goes back to God who gave it to you.

₈The Preacher says: ‘Nothing is like it should be.’

₉The Preacher was a wise man and he taught people a lot of things. He made a lot of proverbs and carefully thought about them and wrote them down. ₁₀The Preacher tried to use the right words that can help people and he wrote them down exactly as they should be, things that will always be true. ₁₁The words that wise people say are like sharp sticks that people use to make their animals go the right way. They are like sharp nails that are hit deep into wood. Only God our Shepherd gives us wise people who give us proverbs to help us.

₁₂I have told you all these things, but I also want to say this: ‘My son, learn these words and be careful what you read in other books. There are a lot of books and if you read too much, you will become very tired. ₁₃When you have listened to everything, you must remember: You must respect God and serve Him. You must do what He says because his commandments tell us what to do. ₁₄Yes, God will judge everything you do, even the things that other people do not know of, things that are good and things that are bad.’