Where Did Cain Get His Wife?

Dear Roger,

If Adam and Eve had only boys, how did their children reproduce to create the world’s people? Incest?

Sincerely, Questioner in Casas’ “What’s Next Class”

Dear Q,

According to the Bible incest is as good a guess as any. Let’s look at several options. We shall begin with the Biblical Foundations.

According to Genesis 4:1-2 Cain and Able were born to Adam and Eve: “Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, "With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man." Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.

Of course, we know that Cain murdered Able and was banished to distant lands according to Genesis 4:15-16: “Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the LORD's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

Then, in Genesis 4:17 we discover that Cain had a wife: “ Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch.

Finally, in Genesis 4:5:4-5 we find that the first human parents had other sons and daughters besides Cain and Able: “After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died.”

So, where did Cain get his wife? Let’s consider three options.

First, Cain married one of his sisters. This was incest. Of course, it makes sense that the fallen, broken, human race begins populating itself by incest. No wonder there are so many mentally and physically challenged people in our world!

A second option is that when Cain went off to Nod he found a woman there and married her. Where did she come from? She was his distant cousin. You know the exponential potential of multiplying 2 X 4 X 16 X 32 X 62 X 128, etc. as each succeeding generation doubles, quadruples, and on and on. Not many generations are needed for the earth to be filled with people. With the length of time the early patriarchs lived (see “Ask Roger” regarding the long years in Genesis), it is easy to imagine a populated earth with multitudes already living in Nod not too many years after Adam and Eve began having babies.

Finally, some have proposed the “Spike” theory in response to the idea that human kind may have erupted on the scene in various locals at the same time—like in both the Rift Valley of Africa and in China. This idea postulated several Adams “spiked” by God into a variety of locations simultaneously and gives insight into where Cain may have found his wife. Unfortunately, this theory raises many more serious questions than the initial one of where did Cain get his wife in the first place, and by adopting this theory the literal interpretation of Scripture is called into question.

Well, Q, I hope my answer throws some light on the issue of Cain and his wife. Numbers one and two above seem plausible to me. Number three seems rather strange. Probably the real answer is behind Door Number Four which we will open on the other side of Heaven’s gates!

Love, Roger

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Comments

Roger,
The second theory sounds good, but still boils down to theory #1. In order for Cain to have a cousin, one of his brothers had to have kids, and where did that brother get his wife? In order to have a third generation, someone from the second generation had to have a wife.

, 05/07/09 04:30 PM

Roger,

As one responder to your answer about the origin of Cain's wife alluded, SOMEONE had to have committed "incest", as another put it, in order for a female to have been born for Cain to marry.

If I may; The idea that God would allow incest as a means of multiplying to "fill the Earth" as He commanded may baffle some. But plainly, that was God's plan. We should keep in mind that the world was different then. For one thing, the effects of sin's corrupting power had not yet taken their full toll on mankind. Though he was no longer a physically eternal creature, he still lived to be several hundreds of years old. Pre flood era humans also probably enjoyed a higher quality of life than post flood to modern day man does. For one thing, there was probably a much greater concentration of purer oxygen in man's environment before the Earth's canopy was removed at the onset of the flood. In part, as a result, mankind likely also had the benefit of all or most of his brain capacity. It is also probable that sin's decay was still only partially effected upon him.

My point is this: Things were different then. The idea of Cain's wife originating through incest simply seems unsavory in modern terms. It is further thought unseemly because of the many mental and physical birth defects associated with close inbreeding. However, unless a person is willing to accept some possibility drawn out of speculations which don't coincide with the information God in wisdom has already given us in the bible, I think that we probably should accept the most obvious as acceptable. That's just one man's opinion.

Ed Costanza , 12/21/11 09:16 PM

Dear Roger,

Just a P.S. to my earlier comments...
Q said that Adam and Eve only had males, then asked if Cain's wife was a product of incest. That's a really strange question, since same sexes can't procreate...

Ed Costanza , 12/21/11 09:41 PM

Is it so unbelievable that Cain married his sister? Just because the Bible doesn't specifically mention that Adam and Eve had daughters directly after-or in between- the births of Cain and Abel doesn't mean they didn't. Even if Cain married his sister, things were different then, genetics were probably different too. With genetics getting bottle-necked after the Flood and a few thousand years of genes becoming 'diluted' so to speak, things change, and God surely knows what's best for us, anytime, anywhere.

Trust in God , 03/29/12 01:15 AM