Tyre’s “70 Years” in Isaiah 23,15-18 413 “began to seek the God of David his father” in this year (2 Chr 34,3), there is little to indicate that this year held any major significance to the Josianic scribes as it goes unmentioned in the Deuteronomic / Deuteronomistic literature that they produced (6). Some scholars have suggested that the number, though corresponding roughly to the passage of time between Sennacherib and Josiah, must be understood as a symbolic typology in use at the time in Israel. In this regard, attention has been drawn to Ps 90,10, which proclaims that a human lifespan is 70 years in length (7): The length of our days is 70 years, or 80, if we have the strength yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away. Herein we encounter a difficulty with the aforementioned position, as the verse in question mentions both 70 and 80 as potential human life-spans, and 80 seems to be a more appropriate number from which a Josianic author would draw inspiration in his redaction of the Isaianic material. It was, after all, almost exactly 80 years after the campaign of Sennacherib that the Deuteronomic Torah was said to have been discovered in the Temple (the year 622/621), and it was in this same year that Josiah reportedly purged the Israelite cult of foreign or heretical elements. This has led a number of interpreters to suggest that the 70-year reference has little to do with a reaction to the rise of Josiah during the decline of Assyria and derives from a later period when the similar 70-year prophecy of Jeremiah became particularly influential (Jer 25,11-12; 29,10) (8). As such, the suggestion has been made that 70 became a rhetorical code for an unspecified but long-term prophetic pronouncement, taken up as it is in subsequent prophetic texts of the late 6th century and beyond (9). Those who advocate this position thereby point to a 6th century (or later) editorial addition to the Jeremianic and Isaianic material (10). In support of this position, some scholars have drawn attention to the Black Stone inscription of Esarhaddon (11), a neo-Assyrian text that makes use of the same 70-year term in relation to divine chastisement. The Esarhaddon inscription mandates the king’s Babylonian building program 11 years after Sennacherib’s devastation of Babylon in 689: (6) W.B. Barrick, (“Dynastic Politics, Priestly Succession, and Josiah’s Eighth Year”, ZAW 112 [2000] 564-582), however, notes that the year coincides with Hilkiah’s ascent as chief priest in Jerusalem, and credits the Chr tradition of Josiah’s turn in piety to Hilkiah’s influence over the boy king. (7) W. BRUEGGEMANN, Isaiah 1–39 (Louisville, KY 1998) 186. Scholars have long noted this passage in relation to the 70-year prophecy in Jeremiah (Jer 25, 11.12; 29,10), though other considerations suggest that the Psalm text is not the basis for the reference therein; see below. (8) See BLENKINSOPP, Isaiah 1–39, 345. (9) For a detailed study of this motif in later Biblical texts, see J. APPLEGATE, “Jeremiah and the Seventy Years in the Hebrew Bible”, The Book of Jeremiah and its Reception (ed. A.H.W. CURTIS – T. RÖMER) (BETL 128; Leuven 1997) 91-110. (10) E.g., BLENKINSOPP, Isaiah 1–39, 345. (11) See R. BORGER, Die Inschriften Asarhaddons, Königs Von Assyrien (AfO; Graz 1967) 12-19.