‘But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.'
Note again the use of ‘beloved'. His heart yearns for these saints of God who are resisting the false teachers. And he calls on them not to forget that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day. In other words with God there is no limit to His thinking as regards time. A ‘day' and ‘a thousand years' are both the same to Him. Time is almost irrelevant, because both a thousand years and one day are to Him simply brief periods of time in a much vaster time-scale, that of eternity.
But there is no justification for applying this principle mechanically (an error later made in the Epistle of Barnabas and by Irenaeus). This use here does not mean that we can take other places where prophetic days are mentioned and make them each mean a thousand years. It does, however, suggest that we would be justified in using the principle of boundlessness if we were specifically dealing with ‘days of God'. Some would argue that this is the case in Genesis 1. It is particularly appropriate there as the days are clearly not ordinary days (the lengths of days are not fixed until day 4).
In fact in Scripture generally ‘a thousand years' is simply indicative of a long period of time. The nearest example to its use here is found in Psalms 90:4, ‘For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night'. There also the idea is that a thousand years is to God as but the passing of a brief period of time, the third of a night (the night was split into three watches). But such a use of ‘a thousand' in Scripture to indicate ‘a great many' is common.
Thus we have the following:
· ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers make you a thousand times so many more as you are, and bless you, as He has promised you!' (Deuteronomy 1:11). Here it is simply the equivalent of our saying, ‘I have a thousand things to do.' It simply means, ‘many times'.
· ‘And the man said to Joab, ‘Though I should receive a thousand shekels of silver in my hand, yet would I not put forth mine hand against the king's son: for in our hearing the king charged you and Abishai and Ittai, saying, Beware that none touch the young man Absalom' (2 Samuel 18:12). This is similar to the first case and simply means a large round number.
· ‘For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills' (Psalms 50:10). We can assume that no one asks who the cattle on the other hills belong to.
· ‘Your neck is like the tower of David built for an armoury, on which there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men' (Song of Solomon 4:4). Again the significance is of a large number.
· ‘And it shall come about in that day, that every place, where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silverlings, shall even be for briars and thorns (Isaiah 7:23). Again the significance is a large number.
· ‘Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand' (Daniel 5:1). It is doubtful if this is intended to indicate an actual number. It rather means a large number of lords.
2). More significant in this context are the examples where ‘a thousand' is used with a time word indicating the passage of time:
· ‘Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, Who keeps covenant and mercy with those who love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations' (Deuteronomy 7:9). We suspect here that no one would suggest here that God's mercy would fail once the thousand generations were past, nor that it bound God specifically to a thousand generations. It simply means a great many generations.
· ‘For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of My God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness' (Psalms 84:10). Again the significance of ‘a thousand' is ‘many', and once more in a time context.
· ‘For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night' (Psalms 90:4). Here the idea is of a large number, (he could have used any large round number). It is important here because it refers both to how God sees time, and to a time context.
· ‘He has remembered His covenant for ever, the word which He commanded to a thousand generations' (Psalms 105:8). Here again we have a reference to God's view of time and it is related specifically to the passing of time and to a time word, ‘generations'. No one would suggest that here the idea is that after a thousand generation He would forget His covenant, nor that He is indicating that a thousand generations will actually be achieved.
· ‘Yes, though he live a thousand years twice told, yet has he seen no good. Do not all go to one place?' (Ecclesiastes 6:6). Here ‘a thousand years' signifies a long time, and interestingly it can without difficulty be seen as two thousand.
· ‘And he laid hold on the monster, the old Serpent who is the Devil, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the Abyss, --- that he should deceive the nations no more until the thousand years be finished' (Revelation 20:5). There are no Scriptures anywhere else that suggest any other than that this is simply referring to a long period of time.
· ‘And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. The rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years should be finished --- they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years' (Revelation 20:4-6). Again there are no Scriptures anywhere else that suggest that the thousand here is to be taken literally.
All this would seem to stress the fact that when God says ‘a thousand years' it simply means a long extent of time, although not a long time to God. And this is especially so as his statement is not just that a day can be seen as a thousand years, but that a thousand years is also to God the equivalent of one day. A thousand years is but a blink of His eye.