Allah the Exalted said: "And We have certainly created the heavens and the earth and what is between them in six days" [Surat al-Sajdah: 7]. There are other verses that mention that the heavens were created in two days and the earth in two days.

The questioner : A questioner asks, “My Shaykh, about some verses in the Book of Allah, including His saying—Blessed and Exalted is He—: , and other verses that mention that the earth was created in two days and the heavens in two days, and other verses that say that Allah—Mighty and Majestic—determined the sustenance in four days. This questioner says that this makes it eight days, while the verse mentions six days. We want to remove this difficulty for this questioner. Please, may Allah bless you.”

The Shaykh : I say—and with Allah’s help—the answer to this question or this difficulty is based on observing the general nature of these days in contrast to the detailed nature of others, in the manner in which I answered previously... on Mishkat, regarding a hadith in Muslim: to the end of the hadith. The total of these days is seven. Many of the early and later scholars mistakenly thought that this hadith was rejected because it contradicts the text of the Noble Qur’an that you mentioned at the beginning of your question, where Allah—Mighty and Majestic—explicitly stated that He created the heavens and the earth in six days. So how can it be said here in this detail that the total of the days is seven? Our answer, which is the answer to this question, is that the number in the Qur’an is a number related to the details of what Allah—Mighty and Majestic—carried out in creation and renewal in what He created of the heavens and the earth. We see in this authentic hadith: , which does not mean that the earth was created on Saturday, because He created the earth in two days. But He created the soil and dirt of the earth, and its dirt He created—Mighty and Majestic—on Saturday. Then the detail that follows this day: the creation of trees, the creation of microbes, the creation of such and such. All these details have no relation to the six days in which Allah—Mighty and Majestic—created the heavens and the earth. Rather, these are other days added to the six days. The six days are a general creation, a general creation, and the seven days are a detailed creation related to the earth.
The student : To the earth, yes.

The Shaykh : Which was created, by the text of the Qur’an, in two days. Therefore, this combination that comes to the questioner’s mind is a confusion between the six days in which Allah—Mighty and Majestic—created the heavens and the earth in a general sense, and what is added to these six days, as in the verse about the earth in two days, and as in the hadith about seven days. There is no contradiction when we distinguish between the six days and understand them as a general creation, and the other days, whether mentioned in the Qur’an or mentioned in the authentic hadith previously referred to from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), are other days, not the six days. This is the answer.

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good, my Shaykh.

The Shaykh : .
The student : Very good.

The Shaykh : This is the spreading out (dahu).