(30) In the house which is called by my name.--This had been done by Ahaz (2Chronicles 28:2), and after the Temple had been cleansed by Hezekiah (2Chronicles 29:5) had been repeated by Manasseh (2Kings 21:4-7; 2Chronicles 33:3-7). Josiah's reformation again checked the tendency to idolatry (2Kings 23:4; 2Chronicles 34:3); but it is quite possible that the pendulum swung back again when his death left the idolatrous party in Judah free to act, and that this special aggravation of the evil, the desecration of the Temple of Jehovah by "abominations" of idol-worship, re-appeared together with the worship of the Queen of Heaven and the sacrifices to Molech.

Verse 30. - They have set their abominations, etc.; alluding, doubtless, to the altars which Manasseh built "for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of Jehovah," and especially to the image of the Canaanitish goddess Asherah, which he set up in the temple itself (2 Kings 21:5, 7).

7:29-34 In token both of sorrow and of slavery, Jerusalem must be degraded, and separated from God, as she had been separated to him. The heart is the place in which God has chosen to put his name; but if sin has the innermost and uppermost place there, we pollute the temple of the Lord. The destruction of Jerusalem appears here very terrible. The slain shall be many; they having made it the place of their sin. Evil pursues sinners, even after death. Those who will not, by the grace of God, be cured of vain mirth, shall, by the justice of God, be deprived of all mirth. How many ruin their health and property without complaining, when engaged in Satan's service! May we learn to relish holy joys, and to sit loose to all others though lawful.For the children of Judah have done evil in my sight, saith the Lord,.... Meaning not a single action only, but a series, a course of evil actions; and those openly, in a daring manner, not only before men, but in the sight of God, and in contempt of him, like the men of Sodom, Genesis 13:13,

they have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to defile it; that is, set their idols in the temple; here Manasseh set up a graven image of the grove, 2 Kings 21:7 which was done, as if it was done on purpose to defile it.