before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds have returned, afterward the downpour.”​—Eccl. 12:1, 2.

Solomon likens the time of youth to the Palestinian summer when sun, moon and stars shed their light from a cloudless sky. In old age that time is gone and the days are like the cold, rainy season of winter, with one downpour of trouble followed by another.