The Bible Nerd

I warned you that these questions would not be the kind of questions that change your life.  Well, they could I guess, but that would be a little messed up.  Anyway, Bible Urban Legend #3 is Cain married his own sister.  Right behind the more comical, “Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?”, comes this question about who Cain would have married.  The obvious answer of his sister grosses most people out today, so they want to hear a different explanation of what could have happened.

Let’s review Genesis 1:1 – 4:15 so we understand where we can go with this question.  God creates Adam and Eve, and their rebellion brings their expulsion from the garden of Eden.  As chapter 4 begins, Eve gives birth to two sons, Cain and Abel, and they grow up to work the land and fields.  Cain kills Abel out of jealousy and anger, and God curses the ground so that Cain will no longer be able to have good harvests.  Cain’s reply is that God has doomed him to be a wanderer who will eventually be killed.  God gives Cain protection and Cain leaves from where Adam and Eve are living.

The next thing we know in 4:16 is, “Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.”  Where did his wife come from?  Why would he build a city for three people?  are there other people out there already?  As Genesis does to us several times, it gives us the bare minimum of information, leaving us with tons of questions.  The author of Genesis is merely trying to show how the line from Cain became an ungodly group of people.  These people are contrasted with the righteous line of Seth in chapter 5.  The author wasn’t trying to answer all of our other questions.

One prevalent theory that I have often heard is that Adam and Eve were the first humans God created, but not the last.  This assumes that God created other people who were instructed to be fruitful and multiply.  These people settled in the “land of Nod” instead of the area around Eden, and from them came Cain’s wife and those who would inhabit the city Cain eventually builds.  The main problem that I have with this theory is that IT IS NOT IN THE BIBLE AT ALL!  It is a complete guess based on no evidence.  No where else in Scripture does it talk about God creating other people.  The genealogies of Genesis show the race of man descending only from Adam (through Seth and Cain).  The New Testament in passages like Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 seem predicated on Adam being the first and only man created instead of born.

What do we know then from the Bible?  People like Adam, Eve, Seth, and Cain lived for a VERY long time.  This means that they would have been able to have A LOT of children, and if they obeyed God’s command, they should have been being fruitful and multiplying.  Genesis 5 is only showing the line of leading patriarchs, and is not meant to imply that each man only had one son in the line of Seth.  In fact, 5:4 says of Adam, “The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters.”  Genesis 1 – 4 seems unclear often when it comes to when things happened.  How old were Cain and Abel when they fought?  How much time from when Cain left to when he “knew his wife” and then built a city?  The reality is that it could have been hundreds of years between these events.  Seth could have also children in that time, and perhaps even Abel had children, although that seems unlikely based on the genealogies.

The most obvious answer then is that Cain either married one of his sisters or nieces.  We just don’t like that answer for two reasons: 1) the book of Leviticus seems to prohibit having sexual relations with close relatives like a sister or mother; and 2) we have our own cultural taboo against what we call incest.  Leviticus 18:6 and following prohibits Israelites from these kind of relations, although the Old Testament is full of Israelites marrying people they are related to (cousins), as ancient tribes often married within their own clan.  The cultural taboo also comes from genetic defects that often happen when close relatives have children (see European monarchies for numerous examples).  Without the genetic defects would we still have these cultural taboos?  Before the fall, genetic defects didn’t exist and it seems they were slowly increased with time after that fall.  That is why people lived so long, and God eventually lowers that ability in Genesis 6 (how He does that is unclear).

So, Bible Urban Legend #3 seems to be most likely TRUE.  Shocker, I know, but the evidence points to Cain marrying a close relative, although how close, we aren’t sure.  I believe the Leviticus laws against incest are right, and we are wise to see effects of genetic issues with close relative child bearing.  If it makes you feel better that God created other people for Cain to marry, then go ahead and do that.  It won’t make you a heretic, and probably shouldn’t make or break your faith.  The truth is that we live in a fallen world that is full of evil and sin.  Who knows how many things that we see as “normal” were not always that way?  At least in heaven, Jesus says we will be like the angels (seemingly implying we won’t be having kids anymore or possibly even “married” in the earthly sense), so we can bury this question in the afterlife.

Coming up next, Bible Urban Legend #2 the Nephilim were a race of half angel, half human giants.  Bring it on!