Where did Cain get his wife? -- Joe G

In a crystal-clear way, the Bible communicates that all humans are descended from Adam (Romans 5:12; I Corinthians 15:21,22, 45; Acts 17:26; Genesis 2:7).

Since Adam and Eve were the first 2 humans, every human ever born is a descendant from Adam and Eve.

But how could it all get started with just 2 people? Wouldn't that pose some problems for their kids? Who would their kids marry?

In the Bible we find out that Adam & Eve's firstborn son Cain had a wife -- Genesis 4:17 "And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch."

For years, many people have doubted the Genesis account of Creation because of the supposed "problem" of Cain and his wife.

The simple answer is that Cain's wife was either his sister or a niece. In our way of thinking, this would cause some problems. But we will show that for Cain, this was not a problem statistically, genetically, or culturally. If you don't know what any of those words mean, now would be a great time to grab a parent and have them go through this answer with you!

Cain having a wife is. . .

NOT A PROBLEM STATISTICALLY:

Many people wonder how the Bible could talk about so many people so soon. But look at how quickly humans could potentially populate the earth.

This chart assumes a life span of 900 years, the first child of each reproducing couple is born at age 50, each couple has 500 child bearing years, and one child is born to each couple during every five years.

We can see that Cain would've had quite a selection for a wife!

NOT A PROBLEM CULTURALLY

To us, we think it would be really strange to marry a sister or close relative. Our society would view that as immoral and rightly so! Marrying a close relative definitely causes physical and/or mental problems in the children they have. We could trace our societal views back to the Old Testament Laws that God gave to Moses. It wasn't in God's program for people to marry such close relatives so God made some rules against it. BUT, those rules were not around when the world first started to become populated. In fact, God had good reason to wait a while to implement those laws. You'll find out more about that in our next point. 

NOT A PROBLEM GENETICALLY

Marrying close relatives in our day and age encourages physical and mental problems in the children. 

Here's how one well known website, www.answersingenesis.org, has put it:

The Bible teaches clearly that all human beings are descendants of Adam and Eve-thus there had to be inter-marriage between brother and sister. There would have been no risk of this causing harmful deformities in the offspring, because mutations (accidental changes in the hereditary information) need time to occur and accumulate in a population. Thus the first few generations would have inherited perfect or near-perfect genes, largely undamaged by mutations. In the pre-Flood world, harmful radiation from the sun and other cosmic sources was considerably more filtered than it is in the post-Flood world. Increased radiation and depletion of oxygen in the atmosphere (subsequent to the lowering of the atmospheric pressure) may have contributed greatly to man's rapid degeneration. With the passing of many centuries, many of these harmful, degenerative changes became added to the human race, so by the time of Moses it was absolutely necessary to have laws against incest, and these were given to mankind (Leviticus 18-20). Today there would be even more chance of deformity/disease in the offspring of such a union than in Moses's time.

This means that the entrance of sin into the world caused humanity's once-perfect "genes" (the stuff in you that determines things like height, eye-color, looks, intelligence, etc.) to become more and more imperfect with time.

Since close relatives have similar flaws, then the flaw would be highlighted and emphasized in any kids they might have. For instance, if two close relatives had the characteristic of a really big nose, then chances are if they married and had a kid -- he would have a super shnoz that would make Pinocchio jealous.

But before sin had a chance to mess things up bad, people could marry a close relative and not worry about the effects to their kids. Once sin and death started adding flaws to a person's genetic code, God in His wisdom made some rules against marrying close relatives. God is SO SMART!

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