Dead Flies in the Perfume

Calmness can lay great offenses to rest. In 1999, NASA lost a spacecraft. The Mars Climate Orbiter had taken years to engineer, cost $125 million, and burned up in the Martian atmosphere for one simple reason. The software team had calculated thrust in pound-force units, while the other team expected metric newtons. Nobody caught it. Years of brilliance from hundreds of engineers and $125 million were destroyed by a unit of conversion.

We're making our way through the book of Ecclesiastes—this strange, contradictory, and unsettling book. There's this wise skeptic who surveys a world he doesn't really understand, believing in a God who is far away and distant. When we get to chapter 10, it finally reads like the book of Proverbs, stringing together sayings that seem a little disjointed at first, with no obvious argument but just one observation after another. Qohelet, which is the name of the speaker, opens this chapter with an image you can smell in verse 1: "As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor."

Think about the disproportion of this. Perfume in the ancient world was precious, costly, and carefully made. A little bottle represented enormous value, and what does it take to ruin it? Qohelet doesn't say a flood, fire, or a natural disaster. He says a fly—something small, dead, and disgusting—falls into something valuable and the whole thing is spoiled. Nobody looks at it and says, "Well, it's mostly perfume." It's not perfume anymore; the fly wins. It's easier to make things stink than to make things smell good.

Cohelet said at the end of chapter 9 that one sinner destroys much good, and now he gives us a picture. He spends the rest of the chapter walking through the five stops where the fly lands and gets into our lives: into character, politics, work, speech, and leadership.

It's easier to make things stink than to make things smell good. The fly wins.

The Fly in Our Character

Look at verses 2 and 3: "The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left. Even as a fool walks along the road, they lack sense and show everyone how stupid they are." Qohelet makes an observation that sounds almost comical. You don't need to interrogate fools about their foolishness; you just know by looking at them as they walk down the street. Folly is in plain sight. It is the thing that leaks out of a person, the way perfume leaks out of a spoiled scent. You smell it before you see the flies.

Some twenty or twenty-five years ago, I got some consistent feedback from people. I was frustrating, proud, and looking back, I don't remember thinking I was. I remember how sure and smart I thought I was, how I believed people should listen to my feedback, and how amazing I thought my skills and answers were. But again and again, people did not experience me in that way. If they spent any real time around me, they could smell me a mile away. They knew me for what I really was.

The book of Proverbs is essentially a field guide for spotting fools in the wild. Watch how a person talks: "The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence." Watch how a person responds to correction: "Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is stupid." Watch how a person handles anger: "Fools give full vent to their rage, but the wise bring calm in the end." Watch how a person can't stop talking: "Fools find no pleasure in understanding, but delight in airing their own opinions." Everyone thinks, "I know someone like that," but no one thinks, "Ooh, it's me."

Character is What Leaks Out

Wisdom in Proverbs is the ability to cope with life—a skill for godly living that applies God's truth to practical realities. But wisdom and folly are not intellectual categories. You can be a smart fool, and you can be a pretty average, wise person. Look at verse 2: "The heart of the wise inclines to the right, the heart of the fool to the left." The heart inclines, leans, and points somewhere. Whichever direction the heart leans, your life eventually follows visibly and publicly as you walk down the road. You can't lean one way with your heart and walk the other way indefinitely.

Character is not what we perform under observation. That's not character; that's performance art. Character is what leaks out of you, whether you know it or not, and whether people are watching or not. It's not a temporary change you maintain for a week; it is a long obedience in the same direction over and over again. This is why something as simple as how someone treats a waiter, or how they behave in a comment section when nothing is at stake, tells you so much about them.

In 2009, I was having breakfast with a counselor who was an elder in the church where I was the interim pastor. I thought we were done, and as I got up out of the diner seat, he said, "Hold on, I want to talk to you about something." Then he pulled out a note card of written observations about me. As he read them, I remember thinking, "Does everyone see this?" It was as if he had pinned me up against the wall and told me the exact things I was afraid other people might one day realize about me. People perceive far more than we realize. The majority of us are not as good at performing as we think we are.

The Fly in Politics and Leadership

We've watched the fool on the road; now it's the fool on the throne. Qohelet lifts his eyes to the one sitting on the throne in verses 5 through 7: "There is an evil I have seen under the sun, the sort of error that arises from a ruler: Fools are put in many high positions, while the rich occupy the low ones. I have seen slaves on horseback while princes go on foot like slaves." The basics of it is that the world's hierarchy, in Qohelet's mind, is upside down.

But before he describes the upside-down nature of a hierarchy led by a poor leader, he tells you how to live within it in verse 4: "If a ruler's anger rises against you, do not leave your post; calmness can lay great offenses to rest." Do not flee, do not explode, and do not match their agitation with yours. Stay, and stay calm.

The Non-Anxious Presence

Verse 4 is a portrait of what counselors call a differentiated life. It belongs to someone whose internal state is not dictated by the emotional state of the person in front of them. When a ruler's anger rises, an undifferentiated person immediately gets overwhelmed, absorbs it, panics, mirrors it, retaliates, or abandons their convictions and their post. Their inner well-being becomes completely determined by the ruler's well-being.

But the wise person has a boundary. It's not indifference; it's a settled sense that who you are is not under the control of someone else. I don't lose it if they lose it. I can stand in a room with an angry boss, an anxious spouse, or a raging critic and remain myself—calm, present, and unmoved. It means pushing through the emotional sabotage of others to maintain a non-anxious presence in this world. It doesn't mean detaching to protect yourself, and it doesn't mean pleasing people out of fear. It is the composure of a person whose footing is somewhere the ruler's anger can't reach.

Notice the fruit: "Calmness can lay great offenses to rest." A non-anxious presence doesn't just protect you; it changes the room you're in. If you're a leader of anything, being a non-anxious presence means you refuse to be governed by the reactions around you. You don't get swept up in knee-jerk reactions, fire off immediate emails, or call emergency meetings the moment you hear something. You provide calm, deliberate leadership that de-escalates rather than matches the temperature of the room.

For the Christian, that footing has a name. You can keep your post when there's an angry ruler because you serve a greater King whose favor does not rise or fall. Your identity is hidden in Christ. Someone else can try to define who you are, but Christ has already told you who you are, and that frees you to be steady in the upside-down hierarchies of this world. You don't have to fix the hierarchy, flee it, or rage against it. You can hold your post and stay steady as the world goes crazy, because your King is not crazy.

The Negligent Ruler

From an angry ruler, Qohelet shifts to a negligent ruler in verses 16 and 17: "Woe to the land whose king was a servant and whose princes feast in the morning. Blessed is the land whose king is of noble birth and whose princes eat at the proper time—for strength and not for drunkenness." The contrast here is between maturity and immaturity, self-mastery and pure passion. One court feasts at dawn out of appetite rather than duty, while the other eats at the proper time for strength because the day's work matters.

The character of the leader determines the welfare of the country. When a fool wears the crown, everyone pays the price; the flies spoil the nation, too. We see this in Daniel 5 when King Belshazzar feasts, drinks wine from sacred temple vessels, and praises false gods while the Persian army is lierally outside his walls. The next day, he is wiped out.

Verse 18 warns, "Through laziness, the rafters sag; because of idle hands, the house leaks." Houses don't collapse in a day; they rot by neglect—a shingle here, a beam there. So it is with kingdoms, businesses, churches, and families. A lazy leader doesn't actively burn the house down; he just never fixes the leak. Slowly, things begin to die away.

Then we hit verse 19, which is genuinely hard to read: "A feast is made for laughter, wine makes life merry, and money is the answer for everything." This might simply mean you need money to get things done, but that is an awkward reading right after describing frivolous people whose house falls down around them. It represents the disastrous philosophy of a foolish leader: don't prepare, don't restrain, and just let money absorb all the consequences.

Qohelet ends this section with a final caution in verse 20: "Do not revile the king even in your thoughts, or curse the rich in your bedroom, because a bird in the sky may carry your words, and a bird on the wing may report what you say." Even in your resistance, you must be wise. If you speak carelessly against power, even in the most private room, it will get back to them. In the ancient world, it was a bird; for us, it's a screenshot or a recorded conversation. There are no private words.

The Fly in Work and Speech

Now we see the fool at the workbench in verses 8 through 11. Qohelet sees a world full of hazards where ordinary work is full of accidents: "Whoever digs a pit may fall into it; whoever breaks through a wall may be bitten by a snake. Whoever quarries stone may be injured by them; whoever splits a log may be endangered by them." You can't control the outcome, and you can't know what's waiting behind the wall.

Then verse 10 adds, "If the ax is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed, but skill will bring success." A wise person sharpens the ax in the first place, sparing themselves the wear and tear of harder work. The fool and the wise man may swing at the same tree, but wisdom swings with preparation and anticipation so that the effort is less costly personally. Folly tries to compensate for a lack of preparation with sheer exertion, hacking away and mistaking sweat for effectiveness.

Exhaustion is not always due to hard work; it's often due to unsharpened work—a meeting you go into unprepared, a ministry you run without prayer, a marriage coasting without attention, or a body pushed without rest. Wisdom sharpens the ax; folly just swings harder.

The Fool's Speech

Wisdom sharpens an ax, but it also bridles the tongue. Our speech is the easiest place to undo years of careful preparation with a single sentence. Verse 12 says, "Words from the mouth of the wise are gracious, but fools are consumed by their own lips." What an image. The fool's mouth is a fire that burns down the house, and the folly escalates over time. Verses 13 and 14 note that the words begin as folly and end as wicked madness. The fool multiplies words, speaking with absolute confidence about a future he cannot possibly know.

This matches the theme of the book of James in the New Testament. James tells us that those who consider themselves religious but do not keep a tight rein on their tongue deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. He warns that the tongue is a fire, a world of evil that corrupts the whole person and sets the course of one's life on fire with flames from hell. Qohelet says the fool is consumed by his own lips; James tells you exactly where the flames come from.

We often convince ourselves that we are just bold "truth-tellers," yet we leave a wake of pain behind us. A bridle directs a horse, and the tongue directs a life. A horse without a bridle goes wherever it wants, and a fool's tongue runs wild without restraint. The uncomfortable diagnosis of scripture is that the tongue simply reveals what is already inside your heart. Stress doesn't put anything new into your heart; it just opens the gates and lets out what is already there. The mouth is where our internal smell shows up first.

The Ultimate Reversal

Wisdom is genuinely better than folly, but wisdom is fragile. That is the root of Qohelet's frustration: one fly spoils the perfume, and one sinner destroys much good. Every single one of us has flies in our bottle. Every one of us has said things we wish we could take back, ignored sagging rafters, abandoned dull axes, or swung to the point of exhaustion.

This entire book aches for something these ancient authors could not see yet. It aches for a King whose court does not feast at dawn, but who ate and drank solely for the strength of His Father's will, saying, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me." There is a wise man whose heart was never inclined to the left, who walked the road and showed everyone exactly who He was. There is One who kept His post even when rulers raged around Him, facing Herod's mockery, Pilate's threats, and the Sanhedrin's fury with a composure that stunned them. When He suffered, He made no threats.

Here is one of the greatest reversals of all time: Qohelet was scandalized to see slaves on horseback while princes walked like slaves on foot. In the Gospel, the true Prince deliberately took the slave's place. He made Himself nothing, took on the very nature of a servant, and walked to the cross so that slaves could be made heirs and seated with Him. The very hierarchy that Qohelet laments, Christ inverts on purpose out of love.

Mary of Bethany broke a jar of precious perfume over Jesus, and the fragrance filled the entire house. It was perfume poured out for His burial—a perfume that no fly could ever touch. Scripture reminds us that we are the pleasing aroma of Christ to God. As a Christian, you are not merely someone trying your best to keep the flies out of the bottle; you are clothed with an unspoilable wisdom. Christ Jesus has become the wisdom of God for us.

So yes, sharpen your ax, bridle your tongue, fix your roof, and keep your post. But do it all as those whose standing before God does not rest on our own fragile, earthly wisdom, but rests securely on His. The perfume that matters most has already been poured out, and no fly, no folly, and no failure of yours can ever spoil it.