Genesis 2:5 Commentary and Bible Study

Look how careful the record is to make it clear to us that this is a general statement, because ‘every plant of the field’ – let’s insert a bracket there, ‘(before it was in the earth)’. It’s pointing out that we are really only talking about day three, as described in the previous chapter. The plants haven’t been made strictly speaking at the time the earth and the heavens were made: ‘And every herb of the field’, down here in verse 5, brackets ‘(before it grew)’. So the chapter is most careful to point out that this is not a re-write of a different order of creation; it’s a general sweeping statement that God made everything, and lest you should misunderstand – because it is going to talk about the mist that came out of the earth – this was actually, strictly speaking before the plants were made. It is tying in with the previous chapter: ‘For the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground’; that means to say he wasn’t there yet, he wasn’t created until the sixth day. Well that’s very clear and plain and careful.