Originally Posted by
ddt
Seems to me that verse 5 says there were no plants yet, and then in verse 7 man is created.
Verse 5 says there were not yet any "shrubs" or "herbs of the field" -- that is to say, cultivated plants -- because man was not yet there to cultivate them.
Note that the words used here to refer to cultivated plants (
siah hassadeh and
eseb hassadeh) are different than the words used in Genesis 1 to refer to trees and fruit-bearing plants (
eseb mazria zera and
es peri oseh peri).
My Hebrew is pretty rudimentary so Hebrew scholars should feel free to correct me.