Surah 14. Ibrahim, Ayah 48

This is an allusion to the total, cataclysmic change, on the Last Day, of all natural phenomena, and thus of the universe as known to man (cf. {20:105-107} and the corresponding note [90]). Since that change will be beyond anything that man has ever experienced or what the human mind can conceive, all the Qur'anic descriptions - in the next two verses as well as in many other places - of what is to happen on that Last Day are, of necessity, expressed in allegorical terms: and this applies also to all descriptions of man's condition, good or bad, in the life to come. (Cf. note [37] above, relating to the term "parable" often used in the Qur'an.)

"A new earth and a new heaven" refers to the entirely changed conditions at the end of things as we know them. Cf. xx. 105-107, xxxix. 67, 69, lxxiii. 14, lxxxii. 1, lxxxiv. 3.