What Do the 'Six Days' of Creation Really Mean

The word ayyam (days) in Arabic is used as a unit of time — but that unit is not necessarily 24 hours. Our 24-hour day is a calculation based on one rotation of the Earth. Allah is talking about the creation of the skies and the earth. If days are calculated by a rotation, what is rotating? The entire known universe, which is several billion years old. What is one cycle of that? That could be a "day" from the heavenly perspective.

So when Allah uses "day" here, He is using it as a unit of time — but from whose perspective? Our day is calculated by the sun: sunrise and sunset. That is the earthly perspective. From Allah's perspective, or from the heavenly perspective, what is a "day"? It could be trillions of years. We have no way of comparing our earthly measure of time to what Allah is calling a day in this context.

The deeper question of wisdom: I have addressed this at length in my Deeper Look series on Surah Al-Hadid, which I recommend you go through. The brief answer is that Allah makes this mention not just as a cosmological fact but to give perspective — the One who planned 4 billion years of stages for the Earth's formation is not overwhelmed by the stages in your life or in the mission of His prophets.