Genesis 2:5

5. And every plant… before it was in the earth The common version is utterly wrong in connecting this verse with what precedes, and so punctuating it as to make plant and herb grammatically the objects of made in Genesis 2:4, the same as earth and heavens of that verse . Literally this verse reads: And every shrub of the field not yet was ( יהיה , future form, involving the idea of becoming, arising, growing, in the land, and every herb of the field not yet was sprouting, for Jehovah-God had not caused it to rain upon the land; and no man to work the ground . This exhibits the Hebrew idiom, but a more proper translation would be: And no shrub of the field was yet arising in the land, and no herb of the field was yet sprouting . The future form יהיה , will be, taken in connexion with the future יצמח , will sprout, shows that a process of growth is contemplated, not the simple fact of existence. Hence the meaning is, (not that there was yet no plant or herb existing in the land, but,) none of the plants or herbs of the fields of Eden had as yet entered upon the processes of growth. A reason for this is given in the statement that rain had not yet fallen. The dry ground had been made to appear, (Genesis 1:9,) and grass and herb had been produced by the Almighty fiat, (Genesis 1:11-12,) but the ground was not yet watered with rain, and the processes of vegetation were not yet in progress .

Not a man to till the ground Here note that the conceptual standpoint is previous to the formation of man; and the whole narrative naturally reverts to what we may suppose to have been the condition of things on the morning of the sixth day. Nevertheless the exact order of events in this chapter is not definitely stated, as in chapter 1.