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Cain’s Wife
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:57:30 -0700 From: mdanipal@yahoo.com Subject: ok To: hossnhousexpress@hotmail.com one more question i have, 1. from the begening of this creation Asave the elder son of Adam was found as a murder. god given a Special number. after this insicedent he went of from his fathers house and he got marry. how it will possible. there was no other world.where does the woman came to mary him. this is my other quetion. thank you for sparing a lot time for me to clarifing my doughts. with warm regards your brother in christ daniel
Hello, Daniel: Thank you once again for considering us here at the www.biblestudyhour.net, & .com, in the resolution of you questions. Relative to the question of Cain’s wife, there are a lot of unknown’s that need to be considered, but first, a listing and a weighing of the known’s might be highly beneficial: 1) Adam and Eve were created full grown; thus, they were of child bearing age right from the beginning 2) The injunction “…be fruitful and multiply…” implies that Adam and Eve were fully able to comply; Eve was in no wise barren; Adam was not sterile, or, sexually impotent 3) The first two offspring were Cain and Abel, in that order 4) It is highly unlikely that Adam and Eve, having already delighted themselves in the joys of the opposite sex, each being fully under the power of a carnal nature, walked around for the better part of the next one hundred years or so, following the birth of Abel, without touching each other again 5) Cain murdered his brother Abel 6) Cain found a “wife”, whom he “married”, and bore offspring 7) The next (recorded) offspring was Seth, born when A & E were 130 years old 8) Seth found a “wife” and bore a son, whom he named Enos 9) “men” began to call upon the name of the Lord during his life time Simply put, Cain got his wife from among his own siblings. The command to “…be fruitful and multiply…” does not just automatically imply familial inbreeding, it demands
2 it, given that God did not, nor did He ever have any intention of creating more people to fill the need for spouses to serve the sexual needs of the members of the first family. The focus in the “beginnings” narrative shifts from Adam and Eve to Cain and his younger brother Abel (Gen. 4:3-24), then back to Adam and Eve and the birth of their son Seth, when they were 130 years of age (Gen. 4:25-5:8). No indication is given as to the age of the first parents when Cain and Abel were born. We can reasonably assume that, given they could procreate from the time they were created, the two boys were born within the first five to ten years of their lives. We may also reasonably assume that the two first borns were full grown, perhaps, in their thirties, or so, when Cain committed the first murder. By way of reiteration, note that the spotlight is on these two, not the first parents, for approximately thirty years. What were Adam and Eve doing, during those years? If one presupposes sexual inactivity between a man and a woman having perfectly healthy sexual appetites for such a long duration, and “no holds barred”, i.e., no prohibitions, what then would be the rationale?! There is no scriptural basis for any such thinking. From the time of Abel’s birth to the day of his death, and, from the time he died at the hands of his elder brother Cain to the birth of Seth represents a fair amount of time— maybe a hundred plus years. Again, what was happening between the parents of Seth during those intervening years, leading up to his conception? If nothing sexually, then Seth should have had the same problem supposedly faced by Cain, when he was of marrying age—no women. Like Cain, however, Seth came of age, found a wife, and bore sons and daughters. Where did he find his wife, if no other sons and daughters were born to Adam and Eve, before he was born? There were no other people on the planet, and God did not create anymore. While we are not told so directly or specifically, Daniel, the simple fact of the matter is, Adam and Eve went right on enjoying the pleasure of each other’s company sexually and breeding children from the time Abel was born, and probably for centuries (not just years) thereafter. This is what they were told to do, thus, it is what they were supposed to do. To have done less, or, otherwise would have been yet another act of rebellion, not unlike the incident at the Towel of Babel—in which case, God would have been forced to take drastic measures to stimulate and to insure the activity He required. Again, unlike at the Towel of Babel, we do not read that any such ‘stimulation’ was ever called for. Hence, we may safely conclude that Adam and Eve bore other offspring not only after the birth of Seth, but, during all those years between the birth of Abel and that of Seth as well. Note that, per Gen. 5: , we are not told that Seth was the very next offspring born to the Adamese, as rather, he was the one who bore a close resemblance to his father, and who reminded them of the son they lost to murder at the hands of their elder son Cain— relieving them of the grief associated therewith. These sons and daughters reached childbearing age within twenty-five or so years, in which case they too inter-married and began to procreate. We do not know when Cain chose his wife—whether before or after the birth of Seth— but without doubt, it was from this crowd consisting of children, grandchildren, great
3 grandchildren, great great grandchildren (many full grown and of child bearing age) that both he and Seth were able to find wives. This would have to be so, and is therefore confirmed by the fact that during the lifetime of the first grandson through Seth, we are told that “men began to call themselves by the name of the Lord” (Gen. 4:26; the evident implication here is that, until this time, all sons and daughters born to Adam and Eve had tended to spurn any kind of God-centered interaction.). This implies most emphatically that there were perhaps many more people on the earth during those days. Once more, while we have no idea when or what year men began calling upon the Lord, we do know that roughly two hundred thirty-five years had elapsed by the time Enos was born. Assuming he must have influenced this change of heart, in which case he was or may have been full grown, then another thirty years or so may have passed. Based squarely upon a mix of rough statistical analysis and a bit of simple arithmetic, it is not hard to imagine that by the time Seth found a woman there may have been as many as one hundred fifty thousand to two hundred thousand people on earth—presupposing that Eve gave birth on average two times every five years until 325, and, that there was a doubling of the population on average, every 20 years or so. 325 was the year Enos bore his first son, in which case Eve alone could have borne 130 or so sons and daughters! The trouble here, Daniel, is that we have no idea how, or, how rapidly the population multiplied. We do know that God’s expectation was that it should do so at a rapid pace. For this reason, within the first one hundred years of humanity there could easily have been between five hundred and ten thousand people born to Adam and Eve. Cain would have had little trouble finding a wife by the time, or, even before, he reached his ninetieth birthday. Moreover, being the elder son, he would have had first pick among any daughters of marrying age born to his parents. Ok, Daniel? Let me know if this helps, alright? Thanks. Bye. Alvin Mitchell