Where did Cain get his wife?
it's an intriguing question, and anybody who's read the Old Testament--
especially the book of Genesis-- has probably wondered,
"Where did he get his wife?"
Here's the verse where we understand that he had one.
In Genesis 4:16-17 after Cain had killed his brother Abel
and he was sent out by the Lord, the text says,
"Then 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."
Now the question is we don't read about any other women in the Bible up to this point,
and so how can Cain leave Eden and he shows up in the land of Nod
and there is automatically already a group of people there--
or at least one woman there that he marries.
Where did she come from?
Basically, you've got two options as to where this woman that Cain married came from.
Number one: You could say that God created another race of people
that He put in different places around the world, and she was one of those people.
Is that a Biblical answer?
When we look into the Genesis record,
we see that the text precludes that from being a viable option.
When you go to Genesis 3, you look in verse 20
and Adam is talking about his wife Eve, and the text says,
"And Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living."
What do we mean when we say "all living"?
We certainly don't mean all living creatures. We don't mean all living plants.
What does it mean that she's the mother of all living?
She's the mother of all living humans.
And, so, it's not that God created another group of people.
Adam and Eve were the first two humans, and from them all subsequent humans were born.
So the idea that Cain went to Nod and found someone else
that was a group of people that God had created besides Adam and Eve...
not what the scripture teaches.
So where did Cain get his wife? Who did he marry?
When we read in Genesis 5:1, 3-4 here's what the text says:
"This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. And Adam lived 130 years and begot a son
in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth.
After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were 800 years;
and he had sons and daughters."
Now notice that genealogy:
It mentioned Seth when he was 130 years old, but it didn't even mention Cain and Abel.
So you see that Adam and Eve are having children prior to Seth at 130,
and then after Seth at 130.
And so really what you find is Adam and Eve are having children
from the time that they start having Cain and Abel and Seth,
and we don't know how many more sons and daughters that they had.
In fact, if you were to do some quick calculation and you you were to say from the moment
that they were in the garden, they were mature enough to have children
because one of the things God said to them was to be fruitful and multiply.
And so we don't know how many years they were in the garden.
Could have been 20, 30, 4,0 50. We don't know. Could have been 1, 2, 3.
But then after they left the garden, how many years was it before Cain and Abel
were old enough to mature and give their own sacrifices?
Would they have had other sons and daughters in that time period?
Certainly.
So, it looks like Cain most likely married his sister.
Well, you say, "Hold on just a second Kyle.
Marrying your sister? That's problematic, isn't it?"
Not from the beginning of time because when the human genome was free
from any type of mutation the problems that we would run into today
with marrying a close relative would not have been the same then.
In fact, you don't see regulations on not marrying your close kin until the Mosaic period
which is thousands of years after creation.
Abraham in 2000 B.C. married his half sister.
And so you see, it would be a viable-- both scientific and biblical--answer
to say that Cain married his sister who was born to Adam and Eve who had moved to the land of Nod.
It's a good question, and it's always interesting and exciting
to find answers to those types of questions from the Bible.