Isaiah 23:15

Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years

Tyre forgotten seventy years

Tyre shall be forgotten “seventy years, like the days of one king”;--a Hebrew idiom, obscure to us, though probably plain enough to Isaiah’s hearers; but of which the most probable sense is, that the round number here, as elsewhere, indicates an indefinite, though considerable time, and that the prophet either farther limits this by a phrase equivalent to “for about a whole generation,” or else implies that the seventy years--the long time of oblivion--shall be as monotonous, and perhaps as short to look back upon, as those of a single reign.

(Sir E. Strachey, Bart.)