وَاِنَّ يَوْماً عِنْدَ رَبِّكَ كَاَلْفِ سَنَةٍ مِمَّا تَعُدُّونَ
"A day with your Lord is like a thousand years of what you count."
— Al-Ḥajj 22:47
In the Quran, time is not one stream. One night exceeds a thousand months; one day equals a thousand years; one instant outweighs forever.
Dimensions of Time in the Quran
Clock-time flows linearly; revealed time is layered — its quality outweighs its quantity.
The gap between one night (al-Qadr) and a 50,000-year day (al-Maʿārij) spans ~1.8 × 10¹⁰ orders of magnitude. A linear scale cannot show this. The logarithmic axis maps the six points as 'orders of temporal magnitude.'
وَإِنَّ يَوْمًا عِندَ رَبِّكَ كَأَلْفِ سَنَةٍ مِّمَّا تَعُدُّونَ
"A day with your Lord is like a thousand years of what you count."
Hac 22:47وَوَاعَدْنَا مُوسَىٰ ثَلَاثِينَ لَيْلَةً وَأَتْمَمْنَاهَا بِعَشْرٍ
"We appointed for Moses thirty nights and completed them with ten more."
30+10 nights mentioned separately — symbolic layers in the number.
وَلَبِثُوا فِي كَهْفِهِمْ ثَلَاثَ مِائَةٍ سِنِينَ وَازْدَادُوا تِسْعًا
"They stayed in their cave three hundred years, and added nine."
Modern astronomy: 300 solar years = 309.017 lunar years. The Quran gives both.
ℹ This is an observational overlap; not a scientific claim of the Quran.
وَإِنَّ يَوْمًا عِندَ رَبِّكَ كَأَلْفِ سَنَةٍ مِّمَّا تَعُدُّونَ
"A day with your Lord is like a thousand years of what you count."
Appears in two separate verses. Related to the ascent of angels — beyond human scale.
خَلَقَ الْأَرْضَ فِي يَوْمَيْنِ
"He created the earth in two days."
"Yevm" means cosmic phase. Total 6 phases: earth (2) + provisions (2 more) + heavens (2).
ℹ Exegetical note — not a definitive interpretation.
لَيْلَةُ الْقَدْرِ خَيْرٌ مِّنْ أَلْفِ شَهْرٍ
"The Night of Power is better than a thousand months."
One night of worship outweighs 83 years — quality of time exceeds quantity.
فِي يَوْمٍ كَانَ مِقْدَارُهُ خَمْسِينَ أَلْفَ سَنَةٍ
"On a day whose measure is fifty thousand years."
The word "Judgment" is not in the verse. Subject: ascent of angels and the Spirit to God. The Judgment Day link comes from the sura's broader context.
ℹ Philosophical parallel to gravitational time dilation is possible — this is an interpretive layer.
At first reading it appears to be 2 + 4 + 2 = 8 days — but the phrase 'in four days' is cumulative (it includes the first 2). The reading held by the majority of classical exegetes shows the Qur'ān consistently counts six cosmic phases.
'Day' (yawm) here does not mean a 24-hour period — but a cosmological phase (marḥala). This is the consensus of Ibn Kathīr, al-Rāzī, and Elmalılı. Reading these alongside modern cosmology is a metaphorical exegesis, not binding science.