A Thousand Years Are Like A Day

It is a very plain Biblical tenet that a day is like a thousand years to God even as a thousand years are like a day.  This is not something stated only in the New Testament, where it is brought up in the context of God's patience with sinners so that they might come to repentance over long periods of time.  As undeserved as mercy is under any circumstances, without some amount of time, however small or great, a wicked person could never turn from their errors.  As much as God despises the wicked—yes, despises (Leviticus 20:23, Deuteronomy 25:16-17, Psalm 11:5, Proverbs 6:16-19)—he is said in 2 Peter 3:8-9 to be so patient with sinners that he waits a prolonged amount of time for some of them to repent.  It is already specified that most people will/would not in Matthew 7:13-14.  Longing for everyone to repent, God nonetheless waits for the sake of some.

Psalm 90:4, a prayer of Moses, touches on parts of this long before the New Testament when it says a thousand years are like a day to God.  Verses 1-3 before it, as well as verses 5-6, establish the contextual focus on the scope of God's longevity.  From "everlasting to everlasting," God metaphysically endures, while mortals die, however long the breath of life remains in them up until that point.  They enter the sleep of death at his whim (90:5, which is literal soul sleep according to Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Job 3:11-19, Daniel 12:2, Psalm 6:5, and so on) as God continues to live, the only being in Biblical ontology that lives forever on its own (1 Timothy 6:15-16).  The immediately preceding verse says that God can turn people back into dust, as the disintegration of the body after death is a reversal of how Adam is said to have been formed from dust into a living being.  In Psalms, that a thousand years is like a day to God is mentioned to emphasize God's vastly different type of existence rather than his merciful patience.

Humans are compared to grass that springs up in the morning and dries and withers by the evening (Psalm 90:5-6).  This is not the only time various people are rightfully, when contrasted with an eternal timeframe, stated to be rather temporal.  Other Psalms say the wicked are like plants that perish (1:4, 37:1-2, 20).  Referencing someone who calls upon Yahweh rather than the wicked, Psalm 39:5 sees Jeduthun writes "'You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you.'"  In his suffering, Job laments how people are "of few days" (Job 14:1), coming up like a flower before withering (14:2).  As the uncaused cause, God lacks the past-finite nature of mere humans and other mortal creatures, and the deity of the Bible is said to live forever by default.  Humans must have never erred or be reconciled to God to partake in this eternal life (John 3:16).

As one generation fades and the next produces still another generation, Yahweh is no closer to dying.  Indeed, it is people who will die once (Hebrews 9:27) and then die a second time after their resurrection (2 Peter 2:6, Revelation 20:15) if they are unrepentant sinners.  From the creation of the cosmos to the resurrection of the wicked and righteous (and only the righteous will exist forever as living, conscious humans) and beyond, a thousand years are like a day that has just gone by to Yahweh in the words of Psalm 90.  To participate in this everlasting existence is a reward for repentant humans that is not contrasted with eternal torture for the wicked.  The latter are to perish like weeds in a fire (Matthew 10:28, 13:24-30) and are shut out from eternal life (Romans 6:23) upon their destruction (2 Thessalonians 1:9, Isaiah 66:22-24).  God would still endure, from one millennium to another, even if no conscious entity besides loyal/pardoned angels was to exist with him and all humans were to cease to be, and each millennium would be like a day to him.