Cain’s Wife—Who Was She?
From the book Answers
It
is not lawful to marry your sister, so who did Cain marry? Were there other
people on the earth? Who lived in the land of Nod? Does this have any relevance
to the Gospel?
We
don’t even know her name, yet she was discussed at the Scopes Trial, mentioned
in the play and movie Inherit the Wind and the book and movie Contact, and has been talked about in countries all over the world. Is she
the most-talked-about wife in history?
Skeptics
have used Cain’s wife time and again to try to discredit the Book of Genesis as a true historical record. Sadly, most Christians have
not been able to give an adequate answer to this question. As a result, the
world thinks Christians cannot defend the authority of Scripture and, thus, the Christian faith.
For
instance, at the historic Scopes Trial in Tennessee in 1925, William Jennings
Bryan, the prosecutor who stood for the Christian faith, failed to answer the
question about Cain’s wife posed by the outspokenly anti-Christian ACLU lawyer Clarence Darrow.
The
world’s press was focused on this trial, and what they heard has affected
Christianity to this day—Christians are seen as unable to defend the biblical
record. And skeptics then make the logically fallacious jump of concluding that
the biblical record is indefensible!
The
atheist Carl Sagan used this same question in his book Contact (which was on The New York Times best-seller list), and the movie Contact, which was based on Sagan’s
book, also used it.
In
the book, the fictional character Ellie relates that she could not get answers
about Cain’s wife, and other questions, from a minister’s wife, who was the
leader of a church discussion group.
Sagan
cleverly used common questions—such as “Who was Cain’s wife?”—questions that
are often directed at Christians in an attempt to prove the Bible cannot be defended.
Sadly,
most Christians probably could not answer these questions! And yet, there are
answers. But, since most churches are lacking in the teaching of apologetics, particularly in regard to the Book
of Genesis, most believers in the church are not “ready always to give an
answer to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope in you.” (1 Peter 3:15)
Why
is it Important?
Many skeptics have claimed that, for Cain to find a wife, there
must have been other ‘races’ of people on the Earth who were not descendants
of Adam and Eve.
To
many people, this question is a stumbling block to accepting the creation
account in Genesis and its record
of only one man and woman at the beginning of history—a record on which many
Old and New Testament doctrines depend.
Before
we answer this question, we will first show how important it is to the meaning
of the Gospel.
The
First Man
We
read in 1 Corinthians 15:45 that Adam
was ‘the first man.’ God did not start by making a whole group of men.
The
Bible makes it clear that only the
descendants of Adam can be saved. Romans
5 teaches that we sin because Adam sinned. The death penalty, which Adam
received as judgment for his sin of rebellion, also passed on to all his
descendants.
Since
Adam was the head of the human race when he ‘fell,’ we who were in the loins of
Adam ‘fell’ also. Thus, we are all separated from God. The final consequence of
sin would be separation from God in our sinful state forever. However, the good
news is that there is a way for us to return to God!
Because
a man brought sin and death into the world, all the descendants of Adam need a
sinless Man to pay the penalty for sin and the resulting judgment of death.
However, the Bible teaches that “all
have sinned” (Romans 3:23). What is
the solution?
The
Last Adam
God
provided the solution—a way to deliver man from his wretched state. Paul
explains in 1 Corinthians 15 that God
provided another Adam! The Son of God took on a human nature in addition to His
full divinity, becoming a perfect God-man—Jesus Christ. In His humanity He was
a descendant of Adam (through Noah, Abraham and David)—He thus became our
relation! He is called ‘the last Adam’ (1
Corinthians 15:45), because He took the place of the first Adam. He became
the new head and, because He was sinless, He was able to pay the penalty for
sin:
“For since by a man came death, by a
man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in
Christ shall all be made alive.” (1
Corinthians 15:21–22)
Christ
suffered death (the penalty for sin) on the cross, shedding His blood (“without
shedding of blood is no forgiveness” Hebrews
9:22) so that those who repent of their sin of rebellion and put their trust in
His work on the cross can be reconciled to God.
Since
the Bible describes all human beings
as sinners, except the God-Man Jesus, and we are all related (“And He has made
all nations of men of one blood to dwell on all the face of the Earth” Acts 17:26), the Gospel makes sense only
on the basis that all humans alive and all who have ever lived are descendants
of the first man Adam. If this were not so, then the Gospel
could not be explained or defended.
The Book of Hebrews amplifies how Jesus
took upon Himself the nature of a man to save mankind (Hebrews 2:11–18). Seven centuries before this happened, the Prophet
Isaiah spoke of Him as literally the ‘Kinsman-Redeemer,’ i.e. one who is
related by blood to those He redeems (Isaiah
59:20, uses the same Hebrew word “goel” as used to describe Boaz in relation to
Ruth).
Thus, only descendants of the first
man Adam can be saved.
All
Related
Thus, there was only one man at the
beginning—made from the dust of the Earth (Genesis
2:7).
This also means that Cain’s wife was
a descendant of Adam. She could not have come from another ‘race’ of people and
must be one of Adam’s descendants.
The
First Woman
In
Genesis 3:20 we read, “And Adam
called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.” In other words, all people are descendants of Adam and Eve—she
was the first woman.
Eve
was made from Adam’s rib (or side, Hebrew “tsela,” Genesis 2:21–24)—this was a unique event. Jesus (Matthew 19:4–6) and Paul (Ephesians 5:31) use this historical and
one-time event as the doctrinal foundation for the marriage of one man to one
woman.
Also,
in Genesis 2:20, we are told that
when Adam looked at the animals, he could not find a mate—there was no one of
his kind.
All
this makes it obvious that there was only one woman, Adam’s wife, at the beginning.
There were never any other women around who were not Eve’s descendants.
Cain’s
Brothers and Sisters
Cain was the first child of Adam and Eve
recorded in Scripture (Genesis 4:1). 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 only these three males are mentioned by name, Adam and Eve had other
children. In Genesis 5:4 a statement
sums up the life of Adam and Eve—“And the days of Adam after he had fathered
Seth were eight hundred years. And he fathered sons and daughters.” This does
not say when they were born. Many could have been born in the 130 years (Genesis 5:3) before Seth was born.
During
their lives, Adam and Eve had a number of male and female children. 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.”
The
Bible does not tell us how many
children were born to Adam and Eve. However, considering their long life spans
(Adam lived for 930 years—Genesis
5:5), it would seem reasonable 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
have married sisters or there would be no more generations!
We
are not told when Cain married or any of the details of other marriages and
children, but we can say for certain that some brothers had to marry their
sisters at the beginning of human history.
Objections
& God’s laws
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 cannot marry your relation. Actually, if you don’t marry your
relation, you don’t marry a human! A wife is related to her husband even before
they marry because all people are descendants of Adam and Eve—all are of ‘one
blood.’ The law forbidding marriage between close relatives was not given until
the time of Moses (Leviticus 18–20).
Provided marriage was one man to one woman for life (based on Genesis 1 and 2), there was no
disobedience to God’s law originally when close relatives (even brothers and
sisters) married each other.
Remember
that Abraham married his half-sister (Genesis
20:12). God blessed this union to produce the Hebrew people through Isaac
and Jacob. It was not until some 400 years later that God gave Moses laws that
forbade such marriages.
Biological
Deformities
Today, brothers and sisters (and
half-brothers and half-sisters, etc.) are not permitted by law to marry because
their children have an unacceptably high risk of being deformed. The more
closely the parents are related, the more likely it is that any offspring will
be deformed.
There
is a very sound genetic reason for such laws that is easy to understand. Every
person has two sets of genes that specify how a person is put together and
functions. Each person inherits one gene of each pair from each parent.
Unfortunately, genes today contain many mistakes (because of sin and the
Curse), and these mistakes show up in a variety of ways. For instance, some
people let their hair grow over their ears to hide the fact that one ear is
lower than the other—or perhaps someone’s nose is not quite in the middle of
his or her face, or someone’s jaw is a little out of shape—and so on. Let’s
face it, the main reason we call each other normal is because of our common agreement
to do so!
The
more distantly related parents are, the more likely it is that they will have
different mistakes in their genes. Children, inheriting one set of genes from
each parent, are likely to end up with pairs of genes containing a maximum of
one bad gene in each pair. The good gene tends to override the bad so that a
deformity (a serious one, anyway) does not occur. Instead of having totally
deformed ears, for instance, a person may only have crooked ones! (Overall,
though, the human race is slowly degenerating as mistakes accumulate,
generation after generation.)
However,
the more closely related two people are, the more likely it is that they will
have similar mistakes in their genes, since these have been inherited from the
same parents. Therefore, a brother and a sister are more likely to have similar
mistakes in their genes. A child of a union between such siblings could inherit
the same bad gene on the same gene pair from both, resulting in two bad copies
of the gene and serious defects.
Adam
and Eve did not have accumulated genetic mistakes. When the first two people
were created, they were physically perfect. Everything God made was “very good”
(Genesis 1:31), so their genes were
perfect—no mistakes! But, when sin entered the world (because of Adam—Genesis 3:6ff, Romans 5:12), God cursed the world so that the perfect creation
then began to degenerate, that is, suffer death and decay (Romans 8:22). Over thousands of years, this degeneration has
produced all sorts of genetic mistakes in living things.
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 or Eve,
since the effects of sin and the Curse would have been minimal to start with
(it takes time for these copying errors to accumulate). In that situation,
brother and sister could have married with God’s approval, without any
potential to produce deformed offspring.
By
the time of Moses (a few thousand years later), degenerative mistakes would
have built up in the human race to such an extent that it was necessary for God
to forbid brother-sister (and close relative) marriage (Leviticus 18–20).12 (Also, there were plenty of
people on the Earth by now, and there was no reason for close relations 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 and found a wife. Thus,
they can 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 bore Enoch:
and he built a city, and he called the name of the city, after the name of his
son, Enoch.”
From
what has been stated previously, 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, 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.
Others
have argued that because Cain built a “city” in the land of Nod, there must
have been a lot of people there. However, the Hebrew word translated as “city”
need not mean what we might imagine from the connotations of “city” today.
The word meant a “walled town” or a “protected encampment.”
Even a hundred people would be plenty for such a city. Nevertheless, there
could have been many descendants of Adam on the Earth by the time of Abel’s
death (see below).
Who
was Cain Fearful Of? (Genesis 4:14)
Some
claim that there had to be lots of people on Earth other than Adam and Eve’s
descendants, otherwise Cain would not have been fearful of people wanting to
slay him for killing Abel.
First
of all, in the days before civil government was instituted to punish murderers
(Genesis 9:6), someone would want to
harm Cain for killing Abel only if they were closely related to Abel! Strangers
could hardly have cared. So the people Cain was afraid of could not have been
another race of people.
Second,
Cain and Abel were born quite some time before Abel’s death. Genesis 4:3 states:
“And in the course of time it came
to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering to the Lord.”
Note the phrase “in the course of time.” We know that Seth was born when Adam
was 130 years old (Genesis 5:3), and
Eve saw him as a “replacement” for Abel (Genesis
4:25). Therefore, the period from Cain’s birth to Abel’s death may have
been 100 years or more—allowing plenty of time for other children of Adam and
Eve to marry and have children and grandchildren. By the time Abel was killed,
there could well have been a considerable number of descendants of Adam and
Eve, involving several generations.
Where
did the Technology Come From?
Some
claim that for Cain to go to the land of Nod and build a city he would have
required a lot of technology that must have already been in that land,
presumably developed by other ‘races.’
However, Adam and Eve’s descendants
were very intelligent people. Jubal made musical instruments such as the harp
and organ (Genesis 4:21), and
Tubal-Cain worked with brass and iron (Genesis
4:22).
Because
of intense evolutionary indoctrination, many people today think that our generation
is the most intelligent that has ever lived on this planet. But just because we
have jet airplanes and computers, it does not mean that we are the most
intelligent. Modern technology results from the accumulation of knowledge. We
stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us.
Our brains have suffered from 6,000
years (since Adam) of the Curse. We are greatly degenerated compared with
people many generations ago. We may be nowhere near as intelligent or inventive
as Adam and Eve’s children. Scripture gives
us a glimpse of what appears to be great inventiveness from the beginning.
Conclusion
Many
Christians cannot answer the question about Cain’s wife because they focus on
today’s world (and the problems associated with close relations marrying), and
do not understand the clear historical record God has given to 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. Because they are not
building their worldview on Scripture,
but taking a secular way of thinking to the Bible,
they are blinded to the simple answers.
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
questions that would otherwise be a mystery.
This article was written jointly by Don Batten,
Ken Ham, Jonathan Sarfati, and Carl Wieland and was first published in The
Revised and Expanded Answers Book, Chapter
8.
