Taste

The umbrella collects a single line of UPDV text — the aged Barzillai's complaint to David that the senses of taste and hearing are no longer reliable to him.

The Sense of Taste, Lost in Old Age

The setting is David's return across the Jordan after the suppression of Absalom's revolt. Barzillai the Gileadite, who had provisioned the king during the flight, is invited to come up to Jerusalem and live at court. He declines on grounds of age, and the appeal he makes turns on the failure of his senses: "I am this day 80 years old: can I discern between good and bad? Can your slave taste what I eat or what I drink? Can I hear anymore the voice of singing men and singing women? Why then should your slave be yet a burden to my lord the king?" (2Sa 19:35). The clause "can your slave taste what I eat or what I drink" makes the loss of the sense of taste itself the substance of the speech, and is the only verse this umbrella anchors.