2 Kings 11:18

wentinto [R.V. to] the house of Baal Athaliah had set up Baal worship in Judah after the fashion of the northern kingdom. We are told also in 2 Chronicles 24:7 that the sons of Athaliah had broken up (i.e. broken into) the house of God, and bestowed the dedicated things of the house of the Lord upon the Baalim. It is clear from this that the house of Baal was not any portion of the temple which had been appropriated to the idolatrous worship, but a separate building, into which spoils from the temple had been conveyed. It may have been on the same hill with the temple, though of that we cannot be certain. There can however be no doubt that the Baal worship had not extended largely in Judah. Hence the readiness of the people of the land, called to Jerusalem by some festival, to go to the Baalite edifice and destroy it.

brake they in pieces throughly That there should be no chance of a restoration. The multitude were no doubt helped in their destruction by the military force with which, in these doings, they had been in such close combination.

Mattan the priest of Baal We read of no other priest of Baal in Judah, and so we may conclude that though the court favoured idolatry, it found no great favour with the rest of the kingdom. Otherwise we should have heard of an array of priests like that of Jezebel in Samaria.

And the priest appointed officers over the house of the Lord From this necessity we may gather that the regular ministrations in the temple had been interfered with by the introduction of the Baalim. The Chronicler gives fuller details on this matter, and the two accounts have so much verbal similarity in other parts that we cannot avoid the conclusion that both writers used a common source of information. He says (2 Chronicles 23:18-19) -Jehoiada appointed the offices of the house of the Lord by the hand of the priests, the Levites, whom David had distributed in the house of the Lord, to offer the burnt offerings of the Lord, as it is written in the law of Moses, with rejoicing and with singing, as it was ordained byDavid. And he set the porters at the gates of the house of the Lord that none which was unclean in any thing should enter in".