لِيَجْزِىَ ٱللَّهُ كُلَّ نَفْسٍۢ مَّا كَسَبَتْ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ سَرِيعُ ٱلْحِسَابِ
So that Allah will recompense every soul for what it earned. Indeed, Allah is swift in account.
In the verses which appear onwards from here (48-51), the text re-turns to the awe-inspiring happenings of the day of Qiyamah. It is said:
يَوْمَ تُبَدَّلُ الْأَرْضُ غَيْرَ الْأَرْضِ وَالسَّمَاوَاتُ ۖ وَبَرَزُوا لِلَّـهِ الْوَاحِدِ الْقَهَّارِ
The day on which this earth will be turned into some other earth, and the skies as well. And they all shall appear before Allah, the One, the All-Dominant.
The statement that the earth and the sky will be turned into some other earth and sky may also mean that their distinctive characteristics and appearances will be changed. There are other verses of the Holy Qur’ an, and narrations from Hadith, which say that the whole earth will be transformed into a levelled surface having no house, tree, mountain and mound blocking the view, nor shall there remain any cave and abyss. It is this very state of change which the Qur'an refers to elsewhere in the following words: لَّا تَرَىٰ فِيهَا عِوَجًا وَلَا أَمْتًا (you will not see in it any crookedness, or curvature - 20:107). It means that things will not remain the way they are. Roads and pathways we see today wind their way past buildings and mountains negotiating all sorts of twists and turns on surfaces high and low. This will change and the whole thing would turn into flat, unobstructed ground.
And this act of changing the earth and the sky could also be taken to mean that another set of the earth and the sky would be made in the place of the present ones. Out of the narrations of Hadith reported on this subject, only some of them seem to indicate either a change in features only while others suggest a change of the thing itself.
Hadith authority, Al-Baihaqi has reported from Sayyidna ` Abdullah ibn Mas’ ud ؓ as based on authentic chains of narration that, about this verse, the Holy Prophet ﷺ said: 'The ground of Al-Mahshar (the plain of Resurrection) will be brand new, radiant white like silver. And this earth surface would be such that no sin would have been committed over it by anyone, and on which no blood belonging to someone killed unjustly would have been shed.' The same subject appears in the Hadith reported in the Musnad of Ahmad and Tafsir Ibn Jarir, as narrated by Sayyidna Anas ؓ . (Tafsir Mazhari)
In the Sahihayn (the two Sahihs) of Al-Bukhari and Muslim, there is a narration from Sayyidna Sahl Ibn Sa'd ؓ which reports that the Holy Prophet ﷺ said: 'On the day of Qiyamah, people will be resurrected on an earth surface which will be clean and white like refined pita bread with no trace of anything else (such as house, garden, tree, mountain, mound etc.,). A1-Biahaqi has reported the same subject from Sayyidna ` Abdullah ibn ` Abbas ' ؓ as in his Tafsir of this particular verse.
And Hakim, backed by a strong chain of authority, has reported from a narration of Sayyidna Jabir ؓ that the Holy Prophet ﷺ said: 'On the day of Qiyamah, this earth will be stretched like leather so that its wrinkles and crinkles are smoothed out (because of which caves and mountains of the earth would be all levelled down turning it into a flat surface), and at that time gathered on these plains there shall be the whole progeny of Adam. Such will be the …