The question of Cain’s wife often takes on an unnecessary degree of difficulty because we can hardly imagine how the new world God created 6,000 years ago was so very, very different from our world today. Imagine genetic mutations being nearly nonexistent. Imagine no environmental pollution. Imagine a constant, gentle climate. Imagine human beings so healthy they lived 900 years. A secular way of thinking blinds our minds to simple answers. But if we accept that God’s Word is true from the beginning (Psalm 119:160), mysteries begin to unravel.
The famous 1925 Scopes Trial in Dayton, TN sadly demonstrated that even William Jennings Bryan was unable to defend the Bible, because he had been influenced by secular thinking. Bryan, a lawyer well-known for his Christian faith, and a 3-time candidate for President was the prosecuting attorney. Clarence Darrow, the defense attorney, placed Bryan on the witness stand. One of his questions to Bryan was, “Where did Cain’s wife come from?” Bryan said her origin didn’t bother him: He would leave the agnostics to hunt for her.1
Skeptics claim that there must have been another “race” of people in Nod that were not descended from Adam and Eve. “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:” (Genesis 4:16-17). What was so clear to the author of this verse about the origin of Cain’s wife that it didn’t require further explanation, has throughout history seemed impossible to explain!
According to Genesis 1:27 and I Corinthians 15:45, Adam was the first man on earth and in Genesis 3:20 Adam declared his wife, Eve, to be the mother of all living humans. This confirms the statement of Acts 17:26, that all nations of man on the earth are of one blood. Cain, Abel and Seth are the only named children of Adam and Eve, but Genesis 5:4-5 tells us they had sons and daughters and that Adam lived to be 930 years old. Considering they were commanded to multiply we can assume they had many children. In the first generation, brothers would have to marry sisters, or humans would have become extinct.
So, the simple answer is that Cain married a sister and was probably married before fleeing to Nod after he killed Abel. In fact, close family marriages were allowed until Moses’ time, 2500 years after Adam and Eve. By Moses’ time genetic mutations were becoming more numerous and marriage between family members could greatly increase the chances of deformed children (Leviticus 18:9-16).
Taking Genesis as the Word of God– Who was there, Who knows everything and is always truthful– should be the basis of our thinking. It makes sense of what would otherwise be a mystery.
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Everyone has a worldview, and every worldview has questions that it must answer. The truth will naturally produce the best and most sensible answers, and the Bible does just that.
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