³⁵ Today I am eighty years old; can I discern what is pleasant and what is not? Can your servant taste what he eats or what he drinks? Can I still listen to the voice of singing men and singing women? Why then should your servant be an added burden to my lord the king?^(A)

³³ David said to him, “If you go on with me, you will be a burden to me.^(A)

⁶⁵ besides their male and female servants, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred thirty-seven, and they had two hundred male and female singers.

³ if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.^[a](A)

¹⁴ But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.^(A)

12 Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years draw near when you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; ² before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return with^[a] the rain; ³ in the day when the guards of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the women who grind cease working because they are few, and those who look through the windows see dimly; ⁴ when the doors on the street are shut, and the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low;^{(A) 5} when one is afraid of heights, and terrors are in the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along,^[b] and the caper bud falls; because all must go to their eternal home, and the mourners will go about the streets;^(B)

⁸ I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and of the provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, many concubines.^[a](A)