The two different Creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 differ, and have been misinterpreted but both passages in fact describe the same event. They do not contradict the order in which everything was created. Genesis 1 describes "six days of creation" (and a seventh day of rest), while Genesis 2 describes only one day of that creation week—the sixth day—and doesn't contradict.
The writer of Genesis 2 focused on the temporal sequence to the sixth day, when God made man while in the first chapter, the author presents the creation of man on the sixth day as high point of creation. Then, in the second chapter, the writer gives more details in relation to the creation of man.
We normally have two primary claims of contradictions between Genesis chapters 1 and 2. The first is about the life of plant while Genesis 1:11 records God creating vegetation on the third day. Genesis 2:5 states that prior to making of man "no shrub of the field had yet appeared on earth and no plant of the field had not yet sprung up, for God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to till the ground." So, which is it? Did God create vegetation on the third day before He created man in Genesis 1, or after He created man in Genesis? The word in Hebrew for "vegetation" are different in the two passages. Genesis 1:11 uses a term that referred to vegetation in general while Genesis 2:5 uses more specific term that refers to vegetation that requires agriculture, that is, a person to work it, a gardener. The passages are not contradicting. Genesis 1:11 records God creating vegetation, and Genesis 2:5 speaks of God not causing farmable vegetation to grow until after He created man.
The second claim of contradiction is about animal life. Genesis 1:24-25 records God creating animal on the sixth day, before creation of man. Genesis 2:19, in other translations seem to record God creating the animals after he made man. However, a good and clearer translation of Genesis 2:19-20 reads, "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field." The text doesn't say that God created man, then created the animals, and then brought the animals to the man. But, the text reads, "Now the LORD God had [already] created all the animals." So there is no contradiction. On the sixth day, God created the animals, then created man, and then brought the animals to the man, allowing the man to name the animals.
Considering the two creation accounts individually and reconciling them, we see that God describes the order of creation in Genesis 1, then clarifies its important details, especially of the sixth day, in Genesis 2. There is absolutely no contradiction here, merely a literary device describing an event from the general to the specific.
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