Well Hello There, Pressers of the Word!
I realize I’ve really been dropping the ball where this site is concerned. I haven’t been here in months and I apologize for that. However, I plan to remedy that over the next little while. I’ve got a series of articles that I intend to post that addresses difficult questions that skeptics levy against Christianity. It’s my hope that by providing the information publicly, Christians will feel confident in their faith and gain knowledge that will help them address the critics.
One particular question that has gained a lot of publicity and which has “fueled the fire” of the doubters is the question of where Cain’s wife came from. In this article, I will attempt to answer that question.
It is seemingly a minefield for the Christian to answer. At least at first glance. The agnostic Carl Sagan used this same question in his book Contact (which was on The New York Times best seller list) and the movie Contact, which was based on Sagan’s book, also used it.
There are 3 things to consider here.
A) Scripture does not record the name of all of Adam and Eve’s children.
B) There can be long periods of time that elapse between the children mentioned in Scripture.
C) Cain married his sister.
In Genesis 5:1-4, only Adam and Eve’s son Seth is mentioned. It states, ” … he had other sons and daughters.” This tells us that Adam had daughters (without mentioning their names). Seth was born when Adam was 130 years of age. The period from Cain’s birth to Abel’s death may have been 100 years or more. That is enough time for lots of other children and even grandchildren to have been born. This is stated as a closing note, not as a declaration that they were all born after Seth. Assuming the accuracy of the Genesis account, and considering the length of lives recorded at that time, a very sizable population could have developed very rapidly. As such, it would not have been impossible for Cain to select a wife among his father’s daughters. During their lives, Adam and Eve had a number of male and female children. The Jewish historian Josephus wrote that, “The number of Adam’s children, as says the old tradition, was thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters.” (Not sure how he arrives at this number, admittedly) (SOURCE: William Whiston, translator, The Complete Works of Josephus [Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1981], p.27)
Also, the Bible doesn’t say Cain met his wife only AFTER going to the land of Nod, as it may have (likely) happened before that. As such, it was probably a sister, or niece. One would not expect for her to marry Cain AFTER he killed her brother, or relative and was now cursed by God to be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth (see Genesis 4:11-12). The Bible never tells us about Cain taking a wife in marriage (when or who), but it introduces the wife of Cain directly in marital relations already in Genesis 4:17. This is a fairly good indicator that Cain was already married when he killed his brother.
I can hear you now. “But that’s INCEST!” The bottom line is that in order to populate the Earth, brothers and sisters had to marry each other (see Acts 17:26). Once the population of the world reached into the thousands and millions, marriage within the immediate family was no longer necessary. Further, the genetic problems associated with marriage between close family members would take some time to develop. It was not until much later (Leviticus 18 – thousands of years later) that God prohibited this type of marriage (brother-sister, mother-son, father-daughter, etc.) in Mosaic Law.
Before this, we see other examples. Even Abraham married his half-sister Sarah (see: Genesis 20:12). Until Mosaic law prohibited it, it was not a sin to marry a brother, sister, cousin, etc. (see Romans 5:12-14) However, it should also be noted that marrying your mother/father was always a sin. The Bible tells us that when two people have sexual relations, they become one flesh (Mark 10:8). Therefore, your mother is one flesh with your father and vice versa. So, it is a sin and a big one to think about anything that violates this truth. Even the children of Adam would sin a big sin if they even turned their eyes toward their mother, or father. We thank God that He didn’t allow this big sin to happen with Adam/Eve. Likewise, the law agrees with this (See: Leviticus 18:7).
Cain marrying his sister would also explain his fear of being killed by whoever found him. A stranger would not care about Cain’s past, but because everyone knew who he was and were also mourning the loss of Abel, Cain felt a very real sense of danger. He felt safe when the sin was a secret, but when God exposed it for all to see, Cain feared the vengeance of his family. Even in judgment, God showed mercy by protecting Cain from retaliation.
In the case of Cain’s wife, again there was no need to prohibit marrying siblings in the beginning based on physical/biological/genetic grounds.
As you know, genes are formed in pairs. At the moment of conception, we inherit one gene of each pair from each parent. In order to contract a genetic disease, both genes will be defective. After the Fall, the results of sin have increased. With mutation after mutation, we now have a genome that is full of mutations among which many are hidden and that will appear as soon as you marry anyone of your close relatives. Therefore, if two people come from the same parent, the likelihood that they both have the same defect is much greater. But if we marry outside of our family, the risk of genetic defects is greatly reduced. Man was not created with defective genes. Our defects are a result of the curse of sin. Cain was only one generation from the original creation and therefore, there was no need for the law against marrying close relatives. However, after thousands of years, the defects were very real and there was a need to protect the people from the harm they could not see. It directed and protected us from the dangers that sin produced in this fallen world.
Once it was no longer necessary to populate the Earth, God also forbade incest on MORAL gounds, and this is more crucial than the biological aspect (Leviticus 18; 20:11). Incest disrupts the family social and moral structure. The family (as we know it today) is the only God-ordained institution in the world other than the Church. In the initial formation of the family structure in Cain’s day, it is difficult to presume the in’s and out’s of intermarriage. However, after God’s official, ordained family structure stabilized, incest was sin. If God wants us to be fruitful and multiply, then it is a sin for us to do something which directly contravenes, or jeopardizes this mandate. With the genetic risks today, it would be wrong logically and morally for us to marry our close relatives.
Do God’s morals change?
Why did God declare intermarriage a sin in the law given through Moses and not consider it a sin the thousands of years prior? A foundational principle for biblical interpretation is that no truth from Scripture is for private interpretation but is given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit to reveal God’s overall purposes planned before time began (1 Peter 1:20; 2 Timothy 1). God is not making this up as He goes, but is fulfilling the overallplan He ordained before the foundation of the world. If all Scripture fits into the pre-ordained plan of God, then we must look at the full, total, complete plan to understand Scripture. We can’t know or comprehend the entirety of God’s plan, but He has revealed enough to us so that we can trust Him. We don’t zero in on one passage and build a doctrine around it. We take a bird’s-eye view, dive in for a closer look to examine a passage and then go back to the bird’s-eye view again. We must always ask ourselves – how does this fit into the whole picture? Thus, we can see here, that it was always God’s intention for incest to be a sin. Once He got the ball rolling,” as it were, He prohibited incestual relations in Mosaic law.
Final Notes and Conclusions
Technically, there is no way to marry anyone BUT a brother/daughter of Adam/Eve. Look around you! See all those people? They are ALL the children of Adam/Eve and your brothers and sisters. Since the Bible says that God made us all from one man (Adam – again, see Acts 17:26). So, when you marry someone, you’re surely marrying your brother/sister from Adam. What we need to understand is that God eventually forbade us from marrying any of our close relatives. God has no problem with you marrying a son/daughter of your FIRST parents. He has a problem with you marrying a brother/sister from YOUR direct father, or mother.
Finally, some critics jump on the fact that the Bible isn’t always written chronologically as an example of biblical error, but that’s a shallow and outrageous conclusion. It would only be an error if the writer INTENDED to record events sequentially and failed to do so. The lack of a linear order, however, is NOT an error if the authors weren’t attempting one. We must approach the Bible on IT’S terms and not ours. Additionally, to jump from the absence of an explanation FOR ONE EVENT to an automatic assumption that this represents a mistake is an unfair leap. Not only unfair, but frankly not even logical. And, it’s particularly outrageous to take the even greater leap of arguing that the entire Bible is therefore flawed, or beyond credibility.
Well, there you go, Word Pressers! My first post in a while, but hopefully worth the wait. It is my sincere hope that this information has provided the reader with a clear understanding of where Cain’s wife came from.
I’ll be posting more soon, so stay tuned!
Until next time, WordPressers!
Take care of yourselves and each other!
Maximus
I Am Ty Maximus 