In chapter 2, it appears that man was created before the plants (Gen 2: 5–8), thus putting the creation of plants on the sixth day. The answer to this difficulty lies in recognizing the proper relationship between chapter 1 and chapter 2. Rather than seeing these two chapters as competing accounts of creation, the reader should see them as complementary. 

The New Oxford Annotated Bible, third edition, says the following in its “Introduction to the Pentateuch”:

For example, it has long been noted that chs 1–3 of Genesis twice narrate the creation of the world. People are created first in 1:27 . . . and then again in 2:7 . . . . Furthermore, the second creation account does not simply mirror or repeat the first, but differs from the first both in outline and in detail. (p. 5)

One often hears the idea that there are two creation accounts in Genesis 1–2, almost as if it were intuitively obvious. There are certainly differences between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. But the question is whether we have here two separate accounts of creation that have been joined together by some much later editor, or whether we have one unified account with different emphases. The former view came from the skeptical scholarship that arose from the Enlightenment. The latter has, for millennia, been the view of the church.

There are differences between Genesis 1 and 2. Perhaps the most apparent difference between the two chapters has to do with the creation of man. Chapter 1 seems to say that man and woman were created simultaneously: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). In chapter 2, the man is created first (Gen. 2:7) and, later, the woman is created (Gen. 21–22).

Read More