Today in Ecclesiastes, Solomon will write in a way that will hopefully get our imaginations to see how bad folly, or being foolish, is in our lives. He will use the analogy of perfume and say that nothing may have been wrong with the fragrance of a perfume to start off, but it had attracted a swarm of flies. Some of the insects had died, and the stench of their carcasses had turned the perfume rancid. Wisdom is sweet, like fragrant perfume, but it doesn’t take much foolishness to turn the smell into something sour because folly stinks. Derek Kidner commented, “It is easier to make a stink than to create sweetness.”