Archive for March, 2008

Continued from… Cain’s wife – who was she? Part III

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 marriage. Some say that you can’t marry your relation. Actually, if you don’t marry your relation, you don’t marry a human! A wife is related to her husband before they are married because all people are descendants of Adam and Eve—all are of one blood. This law forbidding close relatives marrying was not given until the time of Moses (Leviticus 18–20). Provided marriage was one man for one woman for life (based on Genesis 1–2), there was no disobedience to God’s law originally (before the time of Moses) when close relatives (even brothers and sisters) married each other.

Remember that Abraham was married to his half-sister (Genesis 20:12).⁸ God’s law forbade such marriages,⁹ but that was some four hundred years later at the time of Moses.

Biological Deformities

Today, brothers and sisters (and half-brothers and half-sisters, etc.) are not currently permitted by law to marry and have children.

Now it is true that children produced in a union between brother and sister have a greater chance to be deformed. As a matter of fact, the closer the couple are in relationship, the more likely it is that any offspring will be deformed. It is very easy to understand this without going into all the technical details.

Each person inherits a set of genes from his or her mother and father. Unfortunately, genes today contain many mistakes (because of sin and the Curse), and these mistakes show up in a variety of ways. For instance, 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. Let’s face it, the main reason we call each other normal is because of our common agreement to do so!

The more closely related two people are, the more likely it is that they will have similar mistakes in their genes, inherited from the same parents. Therefore, brother and sister are likely to have similar mistakes in their genetic material. If there were to be a union between these two that produces offspring, children would inherit one set of genes from each of their parents. Because the genes probably have similar mistakes, the mistakes pair together and result in deformities in the children.

Conversely, the further away the parents are in relationship to each other, 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 some of the pairs of genes containing only 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 have only crooked ones. (Overall, though, the human race is slowly degenerating as mistakes accumulate generation after generation.)

However, this fact of present-day life did not apply to Adam and Eve. When the first two people were created, they were perfect. Everything God made was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). That means their genes were perfect—no mistakes. But when sin entered the world because of Adam (Genesis 3:6), God cursed the world so that the perfect creation then began to degenerate, that is, suffer death and decay (Romans 8:22). Over a long period of time, this degeneration would have resulted in all sorts of mistakes occurring in the genetic material of living things.

But 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. In that situation, brother and sister could have married (provided it was one man for one woman, which is what marriage is all about, Matthew 19:4–6) without any potential to produce deformed offspring.

By the time of Moses (about 2,500 years later), degenerative mistakes would have accumulated to such an extent in the human race that it would have been necessary for God to bring in the laws forbidding brother-sister (and close relative) marriage (Leviticus 18–20).¹⁰

(Also, there were plenty of people on the earth by now, and there was no reason for close relations to marry.)

In all, there appear to be three interrelated reasons for the introduction of laws forbidding close intermarriage:

1. As we have already discussed, there was the need to protect against the increasing potential to produce deformed offspring.
2. God’s laws were instrumental in keeping the Jewish nation strong, healthy, and within the purposes of God.
3. These laws were a means of protecting the individual, the family structure, and society at large. The psychological damage caused by incestuous relationships should not be minimized.

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 conclude there must have been another race of people on the earth who were not descendants of Adam, who produced Cain’s wife.

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. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son—Enoch.

From what has been stated above, 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 in 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.¹¹

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.¹²

This makes sense in light of what Nod is, too. Nod means “wandering” in Hebrew. So when Cain went to the land of Nod, he was literally going to the land of wandering, not a place full of people.

Who Was Cain Fearful of (Genesis 4:14)?

Some claim that there had to be lots of people on the earth oth
er than Adam and Eve’s descendants; otherwise Cain wouldn’t have been fearful of people wanting to slay him because he killed Abel.

First of all, one reason that someone would want to harm Cain for killing Abel is if that person was a close relation of Abel!

Secondly, Cain and Abel were born quite some time before the event of Abel’s death. Genesis 4:3 states:

And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the LORD.

Note the phrase “in the process of time.” We know 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 time 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. By the time Abel was killed, there may 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.

Adam and Eve’s descendants were very intelligent people. We are told that 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 have the idea that their generation is the most advanced that has ever been on this planet. Just because we have jet airplanes and computers doesn’t mean we are the most intelligent or advanced. This modern technology is really a result of the accumulation of knowledge.

We must remember that our brains have suffered from 6,000 years of the Curse. We have greatly degenerated compared to 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 advanced technology almost from the beginning.

Cain had the knowledge and talent to know how to build a city!

Conclusion

One of the reasons many Christians cannot answer the question about Cain’s wife is that they tend to look at today’s world and the problems that would be associated with close relations marrying, and they do not look at 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 evidence which would otherwise be a real mystery. You see, if evolution is true, science has an even bigger problem than Cain’s wife to explain—namely, how could man ever evolve by mutations (mistakes) in the first place, since that process would have made everyone’s children deformed? The mere fact that people can produce offspring that are not largely deformed is a testimony to creation, not evolution.

Footnotes

1. This is a Hollywood version of the famous Scopes Trial. K. Ham, The wrong way round! Creation 8(3):38-41, 1996; D. Menton, Inherit the Wind: an historical analysis, Creation 19(1):35-38, 1997. Back
2. Contact, Warner Bros., released July 11, 1997. Based on Carl Sagan’s Contact, Pocket Books, New York, 1985. Back (1) Back (2)
3. The World’s Most Famous Court Trial, Tennessee Evolution Case (a word-for-word report), Bryan College (reprinted from the original edition), p. 302, 1990. Back
4. C. Sagan, Contact, Pocket Books, New York, 1985, 19–20. Back
5. Apologetics—from the Greek word, απολογια (apologia), meaning “to give a defense.” The field of Christian apologetics covers the ability of Christians to give a defense of their faith in Jesus Christ and their hope in Him for salvation, as expressed in 1 Peter 3:15. This ability requires a thorough knowledge of Scripture, including the doctrines of the creation, Original Sin, Curse, Flood, Virgin Birth, life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, the Cross, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, promise of the Second Coming, and a new heaven and new earth. Then one needs to be able to explain logically and clearly these various doctrines in a way that justifies one’s faith and hope in Jesus Christ. Back
6. Eve, in a sense, was a descendant of Adam in that she was made from his flesh and thus had a direct biological connection to him (Genesis 2:21–23). Back
7. F. Josephus, The Complete Works of Josephus, translated by W. Whiston, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1981, 27. Back
8. Another example would be Isaac’s wife, Rebekah—she was Isaac’s second cousin (Genesis 24:15). Back
9. Leviticus 18–20. Back
10. Some have claimed this means God changed His mind by changing the laws. But God didn’t change His mind—because of the changes that sin brought and because God never changes, He introduced new laws for our sake. Back
11. J. Calvin, Commentaries on The First Book of Moses Called Genesis, Vol. 1, reprinted, Baker House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1979, 215. Back
12. Even if Calvin’s suggestion concerning this matter is not correct, there was still plenty of time for numerous descendants of Adam and Eve to move out and settle areas such as the land of Nod.