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Where Did Cain Get His Wife From? |
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Cain’s Wife Who Was Cain? Cain was the first child of Adam and Eve recorded in Scripture (Genesis 4:1) he and his brothers Abel (Genesis 4:2) and Seth (Genesis 4:25), were part of the FIRST generation of children ever born on this Earth. Even though these three males are specifically mentioned, Adam and Eve had other children. Cain’s Brothers And Sisters In Genesis 5:4 we read a statement that sums up the life of Adam and Eve-”And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters”. During their lives, Adam and Eve had a number of male and female children. In fact, 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”. Scripture does not tell us how many children were born to Adam and Eve, but considering their long life spans (Adam lived for 930 years-Genesis 5:5), it would seem logical to suggest there were many! (Remember, they were commanded to “Be fruitful, and multiply”. (Genesis 1:28) The Wife If we now work totally from Scripture, without any personal prejudices or other extra-Biblical ideas, then back at the beginning, when there was only the first generation, brothers would have had to marry sisters or there wouldn’t have been any more generations! We are not told when Cain married or many of the details of other marriages and children, but we can say for certain that Cain’s wife was probably his sister or a close relative. Objections Many people immediately reject the conclusion that Adam and Eve’s sons and daughters married each other by appealing to the law against brother-sister intermarriage. Some say that you can’t marry your relation. Actually, if you don’t marry your relation, you don’t marry a human! A wife is related to her husband before they are married because ALL people are descendants of Adam and Eve-all are one blood. This law forbidding close relatives marrying was not given until the time of Moses (Leviticus 18-20). Provided marriage was one man for one woman for life (based on Genesis 1 & 2), there was no disobedience to God’s law originally (before the time of Moses) when close relatives (even brothers and sisters) married each other. Remember that Abraham was married to his half-sister (Genesis 20:12). God’s law forbade such marriages, but that was some four hundred years later at the time of Moses. When the first two people were created, they were perfect-no mistakes! Everything that God made was “very good” (Genesis 1:31) That means their genes were perfect-no mistakes! But when sin entered the world (because of Adam-Genesis 3:6), God cursed the world so that the perfect creation began to degenerate, that is, suffer death and decay (Romans 8:22). Over a long period of time, this degeneration would have resulted in all sorts of mistakes occurring in the genetic material of living things. But Cain was in the first generation of children ever born. He (as well as his brothers and sisters) would have received virtually no imperfect genes from Adam and Eve, since the effects of sin and the Curse would have been minimal to start with. However by the time of Moses (about 2,500 years later), degenerative mistakes would have accumulated to such an extent in the human race that it would have been necessary for God to bring in the laws forbidding brother-sister (and close relative) marriage (Leviticus 18-20). Also, there were plenty of people on the earth by now, and there was no reason for close relations to have to marry. Cain and the land of Nod Some claim that the passage in Genesis 4:16-17 means that Cain went to the land of Nod to find a wife. Thus, they conclude there must have been another race of people on the earth, who were not descendants of Adam, who produced Cain’s wife. “And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he built a city, and called the named of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch”. From what has been stated above, it is clear that ALL humans, Cain’s wife included, are descendants of Adam. However, this passage does NOT say that Cain went to the land of Nod and found a wife. John Calvin in commenting on these verses states: “from the context we may gather that Cain, before he slew his brother, had married a wife; otherwise Moses would now have related something respecting his marriage” Cain was married BEFORE he went to the land of Nod. He didn’t find a wife there, but “knew” (had sexual relations with) his wife. Conclusion One of the reasons many Christians cannot answer the question about Cain’s wife is because they tend to look at today’s world and the problems that would be associated with close relations marrying, and not the clear historical record God has given us. They try to interpret Genesis from our present situation, rather than understand the true Biblical history of the world and the changes that have occurred because of sin. Genesis is the record of the God who was there as history happened. It is the Word of one who knows everything, and who is a reliable Witness from the past. Thus, when we use Genesis as a basis for understanding history, we can make sense of evidence which would otherwise be a real mystery. You see, if evolution is true, science has an even bigger problem than Cain’s wife to explain-namely, how could man ever evolve by mutations (mistakes) in the first place, since that process would have made everyone deformed? The mere fact that people can produce offspring that are not largely deformed is a testimony to Creation, NOT evolution.
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