In two instances the Qura’n speaks about the Day of Judgment as very long days. In verse 4 of Surah Maarij the Book says:

“To Him do the angels and the spirits ascend, in a day whose measure is fifty thousand years”

Secondly in verse 5 of Surah Sajda the book says:

“He regulates the affairs from the heaven to the earth, and then it shall ascend to Him on day that measures a thousand years of what you reckon.”

The first verse indeed is about the Day of Judgment and the verses following are about the events and attributes of the Day of Judgment. There is a debate among the commentators about the second verse (1)Some feel that this is about the implementation of the will of God in its most lofty form or in other words is about the time the implementation of God’s will take and each phase of this time will consist of a thousand years. The angels create this system on the command of God. One phase begins after another.

But when we study the other verses of the Qura’n we find that they speak about the rolling up of the skies and if we look at the explanation of the verse we find that it is about the Day of Judgment. Allama Tabatabai in Al Mizan has preferred this explanation after considering all others (2)

The question that arises here is that the duration of that Day according to our time period is given as fifty thousand years while in other verses it is only a thousand years so why is it so?

The answer to this question from Imam Jafar Sadiq is recorded with clear details in Amali of Shaykh Toosi in a Hadith which says he said:

“There are Fifty stages (of the examination of people’s deeds) in Qiyamah.

Every stage is one thousand years according to this world’s time. The imam then recited this verse “The length of the Day will be fifty thousand years.”

Here the mention of thousand and fifty thousand years is to give a number or to show the enormity? There are two doubts about it but the message that reaches our ears is that it will be a very Hard Day. It will be a very profound and complex day and no one can go through it with ease. Everyone should be preparing to face such a severe and long day.

The point here is that a day in the time spent by our world in the orbit and there is a difference in the time of rotation of all other planets that exist. The earth complete one orbit in 24 hours and the moon does so in month (its day and night are each two weeks long. The other planets too rotate in the same manner around the sun in a specific time. It may also be possible that there may be planets that complete this duration in hundreds or thousands of years. It should therefore, not be surprising that a Day of Judgment will be

Fifty thousand years in duration.

We repeat that the Qura’n intends to give a systematic message which is evident in such explanations.

1. Aloosi has mentioned seven explanations for this in Ruhul Ma’ani (vol.21 page 107) and one of them is Qiyamah.