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Isaiah 23 · a question people ask

What are the seventy years of 23:15?

In the text

The chapter says, "Tyre will be forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one king" (23:15), and twice speaks of "the end of seventy years" (23:15, 23:17). It doesn't say when the seventy years begin, and it doesn't name the king. What it says will happen at the end is plain: "it will be to Tyre like in the song of the prostitute" (23:15), "the LORD will visit Tyre" (23:17), and "Her merchandise and her wages will be holiness to the LORD" (23:18). These notes add no date, do no arithmetic with the years, and don't join them to any other seventy years in the Bible, since the chapter doesn't.

From Favor's study of Isaiah 23

Isaiah 23: The burden of Tyre

"Who has planned this against Tyre?" The answer uses the question's own words: the LORD of Armies planned "to bring into contempt all the honorable of the earth" (23:9). And the burden that begins with howling ships ends with Tyre's wages "holiness to the LORD" (23:18), in Hebrew the words engraved on the high priest's gold plate (Exodus 28:36).

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