He had replaced covenanting with consuming and all promises had been reduced to tradeable commodities

While the late critical dating of Ecclesiastes is not to be doubted, one may hypothesize that the tradition was intuitively correct in assigning that teaching to Solomon. I believe that the mood of world-weariness, satiation, boredom, and vanity in that literature is reflective of the Solomonic situation. To the extent that Ecclesiastes reflects a situation of alienation, it likely speaks to a situation like that of Solomon. Solomon had set out to counter the world of Moses' community of liberation and he had done so effectively. He had traded a vision of freedom for the reality of security. He had banished the neighbor for the sake of reducing everyone to servants. He had replaced covenanting with consuming and all promises had been reduced to tradeable commodities. Every such trade-off made real energy less likely. 

That is to make a harsh judgment upon a cultural reality which can, on the other hand, make certain positive claims for itself. But we are not engaged in a study of the royal consciousness on its own terms. We are here considering the meaning of prophetic alternative, an alternative to a social world void of criticism and energy. At the same time we must at least pay attention to the theological contributions of this period in order to be alert to what is there so as not to overstate the prophetic perspective. 

Following this passage is a deep, at times troubling critique of the theology of the creation and messianic faith, which is both insightful about the dangers of those topics as well as admitting their value. It is one of the most impressive things about Walter Brueggemann and many other writers on these topics in religion that their insider critiques are so much deeper than outsider critiques. 

They realize that if their insights, their own prophetic imagination is to find solid footing that they need to be even recklessly honest in bringing up problems and finding them. What is left of your faith after going through that is both more informed and safer but it is also stronger. At least that is what I've found. 

The same is true of testing other areas of human thought, I've tried that, to the lesser abilities that I can bring to it, in areas of politics and science, looking critically at, for example, my formerly fellow leftists, socialists, liberals. I found out that both through that exercise and the religious testing over the course of my public writing on this, that I came out a lot farther "to the left" than I ever was as a secular socialist. 

I would recommend it but I would warn you that you will want something to keep one foot on while you tear at and tease out your faith that there are two different things to always ground yourself in, one really. 

It's no big secret, it's in the Scriptures, love God and love others as you love yourself. And one thing I've come to find, increasingly, those are the same thing. At least when it's this God you're to love,  God as presented by the tradition of Moses and Jesus. 

When you pray "your kingdom come, your will be done" that kingdom consists of YOU doing what Paul, what Jesus, what a random Pharisee answered Jesus was the greatest commandment, what Leviticus said what Hillel said The Law consisted of (albeit, according to tradition in a less direct and negative expression of it), Love your neighbor as you love yourself, your neighbor being everyone. And, as you can tell from what I write, it's no easy thing to do. I fail at it constantly, publicly.  I'm sure the Prophets, especially in their often furious assaults against the established powers in the court and in the Temple among the weak and corruptible People, had a hard time doing it. And, getting back to that negative expression,  it isn't merely a question of not doing to others as you would not have them do to you, the famous negative expression of it. 

I will go on with Brueggemann's critique, I'm finding it very difficult to leave any of his text out of this study of it because it is a masterwork of organized articulation. I would recommend not only reading the whole thing but copying it out, typing it out. That has been forcing me to read it at a far deeper level than just reading it. And looking up all of the cited Scripture and reading those. If nothing else, this has been helping me cope with the disaster we are encountering as a result of The Law being rejected, of being gulled and suckered into accepting its inversion of what's in it for me? as the basis of our government, our society and, most of all, the media that has constructed the corrupted minds of so many Americans.   I really do believe that until people really are convinced that there is more than a merely conventional or utilitarian interest in doing whats right, it will always be found to be too easy to do evil.  It's the conventional way of life in contemporary American and British culture, and elsewhere, and wherever it takes, equality and democracy, justice, even the very concept of the truth being better than a lie that temporarily works, is lost, utterly.