a remarkable continuity with the very Egyptian reality that Moses had sought to counter

 Solomon was able to counter completely the counter-culture of Moses.

(a) He countered the economics of equality with the economics of affluence.  The contrast is clear and sharp.  Mosaic experience had this kind of vision:   "He that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack;  each gathered according to what he could eat" (Exodus 16:18).  Here there is no thought of surplus and the accumulation of consumer goods, for that is all over by the time one sits at the royal table in Jerusalem.

(b) He countered the politics of justice with the politics of oppression.  Mosaic experience had this kind of vision:

And if your brother becomes poor, and cannot maintain himself with you,  you shall maintain him  as a stranger and a sojourner he shall live with you.  Take no interest from him or increase,  but fear your God;  that your brother may live beside you. . . . . For they are my servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt;  they shall not be sold as slaves.  (Leviticus 25:35-42)

That is all over by the time Solomon gets around to forced labor to enhance his rule.

(c)  He countered the religion of God's freedom with the religion of God's accessibility.  Mosaic experience had this kind of a vision of God's freedom.  Moses had insisted on God's presence:  "Is it not in thy going with us, so that we are distinct,  I and thy people, from all other people that are upon the face of the earth?"  (Exodus 33:16).  But Yahweh answers in his uncompromising freedom,  "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious,  and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.  But . . . you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live."  (Exodus 33:19-20).

Solomon managed what one would think is not possible, for he had taken the Mosaic novum and rendered it null and void.  In tenth-century Jerusalem it is as though the whole revolution and social experiment had not happened.  The long sequence of imperial history went on as though it had not been interrupted by this revelation of the liberating God.  Solomon managed a remarkable continuity with the very Egyptian reality that Moses had sought to counter.

I have been relating this to our own experience in today's United States and change the words a bit and you have the same thing.  No doubt the pious Temple goers and those who liked to monitor the sex lives of other people felt themselves to be the real, authentic bearers of the torch of the old time religion even as they wallowed in the privileges they got from the corrupt neo- Pharonic regime of Solomon even as the white-evangelical Trump voters support his even more vulgar corrupt anti-democratic and openly criminal and treasonous regime.  And we got here in pretty much the same ways that are described in the books carrying the stories of Saul and David and Solomon and the long succession of corrupt kings that followed them.

I remember when, back when Carter, probably the most idealistic president in our history,  was president noticing that the TV seemed to be carrying a lot more of the kind of adoration of the rich and famous and what was newly called their "lifestyles" and how, unsurprisingly, that paved the way for the Hollywood royalty of Reagan and then the Bushes more conventional old-money royalty to have now had that been reduced to the most degenerate of all of them ( SO FAR) Trump.  

When I am at my most pessimistic I think that the introduction of television and, now, the internet into the lives of billions around the world is an irredeemable act of "progress" that is and never can be made compatible with egalitarian democracy, with morality, that the programming, the domination of malicious gossipers and liars which has been substituted for a culture of daily human experience in reality instead of what is as stupidly called "virtual reality" as "artificial intelligence," computer scientists inventing imaginary, "interactive" friends and pretending they are real.   I know people in their 20s whose lives and minds are dominated by their vicious circles on Facebook where they are prey to the billionaires' propaganda, foreign and, as dangerously, domestic.  And I'm not talking about stupid kids in their 20s, I'm talking about those with educational credentials who are as credulous about what they see on the screen as geezers my own age and olders who fall for FOX on TV.  

I look at the de-religionized "evangelicals" and "traditional-Catholics" and the degenerate "Orthodox" such as the Kuschners and I despair at what can be done to counter them and their admittedly secular degenerate buddies.   

But there is no alternative to trying, the alternative to countering them is to give up and die, bodily, in time, spiritually, immediately.  

I really, really do mean it when I say I hate Hollywood and everything that has issued from it. But not only them, all of the sources of corruption, all, when you dig a little way down, out of the same motives of affluence that powered the corruption of Solomon, secular and which get to call themselves "religion" out of the irresponsible shirking of responsibility as found in the First Amendment.  Yeah, I'm still pissed off over Calvary Baptist in Sanford, Maine which should be shut down for spreading Covid-19.  They've got one of those millionaire funded "civil liberties" outfit going to court to help them, one which is religion themed.  I really do mean it when I say I hate the "civil liberties" industry, who were so lavishly paid by the media and Hollywood so they could get them the ability to lie with impunity and to corrupt sex by getting everyone hooked on porn.   They're all essentially the same, secular and "religious,"  the "secular" as insufferably self-righteous as the "evangelicals" and "traditional-Catholics".