but supposing the author meant to say "a thousand years." there are words for that. the author could have written — (eleph shanim). but instead, he wrote the literal word for a single day.
yes because this is a retroactive story to answer why the jews have a seven day week that to them isn't paganistic
you can argue that it's all a metaphor, but the p'shat meaning is 24 hours. applied, it's about the structure of a week. to lay a secret meaning on top that contradicts the literal is rather silly, imho.
what i mean is, if you argue that it was anything other than a real 24 hour day, then the whole thing about god resting on the 7th day and this giving meaning to the sabbath becomes pointless and irrelevent.
becides the fact that if they meant something else the words they used in the context wouldn't make much sense with say olam or qedem, maybe i need more hebrew though
by the way i was just pointing out for the guy i posted to that the words wouldn't make any sense with rest of the story. i was showing that the idea of putting in other words that he picked won't work because they don't really relate to yom at all or mean day