‘So I went in and saw, and behold every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, engraved on the wall round about. And there stood before them seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah, the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand. And the odour of the cloud of incense went up.'
The depictions were not specifically of animals and creatures unclean in themselves. ‘Creeping things' (things that slither or scuttle along the ground) were simply in contrast with domestic animals, wild beasts, birds and fish (compare Romans 1:23). It would include snakes, scorpions, dung beetles (scarabs) and vermin. Possibly mostly in mind here were the serpent deities, sacred dung beetles and other hideous creatures of religions well known in Egypt, Canaan and Mesopotamia cults. The abomination was mainly in the fact that they were depicted and worshipped, likening the heavenly to the earthly, degrading the idea of God. They were graven images, seemingly graven on the walls for the purpose of worship.
The ‘seventy elders' were probably intended to indicate the rulership of Israel. That is not to say that they necessarily in person comprised all the actual seventy leading elders holding that position at the time - compare Numbers 11:16 - only that they represented them in vision).
Indeed Jaazaniah, the son of Shaphan, may well have been the son of the Shaphan who helped Josiah in his reforms and was his ‘scribe' (2 Kings 22:3), and whose brother supported Jeremiah (Jeremiah 26:24). These men were therefore important people who had ‘gone wrong', for they came to offer incense to their graven images in the dark, and symbolised the total deterioration of Israel's leadership. Seven indicates perfection in the divine sphere and thus ‘seventy' (seven intensified) worshipping elders may be intended to represent the whole of the leadership engaged in idolatry.
‘And the odour of the cloud of incense went up.' Possibly in the mention of this there is the thought that it not only went up, but that it ‘went up' and was noted in heaven and that Yahweh was aware of it, and was angry.