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You will become hard of hearing. You will not hear the noise in the streets. Even the stone grinding your grain will seem quiet to you. You will not be able to hear the women singing. But even the sound of a bird singing will wake you early in the morning because you will not be able to sleep.

You will be afraid of high places. You will be afraid of tripping over every small thing in your path. Your hair will become white like the flowers on an almond tree. You will drag yourself along like a grasshopper when you walk. You will lose your desire,[a] and then you will go to your eternal home. The mourners will gather in the streets as they carry your body to the grave.

Death

Remember your Creator while you are young,
    before the silver rope snaps and the golden bowl is crushed
like a jar broken at the well,
    like a stone cover on a well that breaks and falls in.

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Footnotes

  1. Ecclesiastes 12:5 desire Or “appetite” or “sexual desire.” The Hebrew text here is hard to understand.

when the doors to the street are closed
    and the sound of grinding fades;
when people rise up at the sound of birds,
    but all their songs grow faint;(A)
when people are afraid of heights
    and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
    and the grasshopper drags itself along
    and desire no longer is stirred.
Then people go to their eternal home(B)
    and mourners(C) go about the streets.

Remember him—before the silver cord is severed,
    and the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
    and the wheel broken at the well,

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