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Bible Q & A
Q.
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This is one of the most common questions we receive. If Adam was the first man, directly created by God, and Eve the first woman, also a
direct creation, and only three sons are mentions – Cain, Abel, and Seth, it is but natural that many ask: “Where then, did Cain get his wife?”
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A.
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Did Cain have a wife? Yes, it is
written in Genesis 4:17: “And Cain
knew his wife; and she conceived,
and bare Enoch…”
Cain had a wife, and a son.
For that matter, where did Seth get
a wife? Seth is a direct ancestor
of Noah, of Abraham, of David, and
of Christ. So Seth, as well as
Cain, must have had a wife.
The answer is found in the genealogy
of Adam, in Genesis 5. It is
written in verses 4-5: “And the
days of Adam after he had begotten
Seth were eight hundred years: and
he begat sons and daughters.
And all the days that Adam lived
were nine hundred and thirty years:
and he died.”
There is the answer. Adam begat
sons AND DAUGHTERS. God had blessed
Adam and Eve, and said unto them:
“Be fruitful and multiply,
and replenish the earth…” All human
life started from them. How could
they be fruitful and multiply,
unless they had BOTH sons and
daughters, and their sons married
the daughters?
The answer is simple. Both Cain and
Seth married their sisters. There
undoubtedly were many of them even
before the birth of Seth.
Adam and Eve, as God had proposed,
were fruitful! After the
birth of Seth, Adam lived EIGHT
HUNDRED YEARS, and “he begat sons
and daughters.” The sense of the
passage is that he continued
begetting sons and daughters. That
is a long time – as long as though
some man and his wife living back in
the middle ages –way back in the
1100’s – had continued to live and
continually bear children ever
since, clear up to no – the 2000’s!
Adam was 130 years of age when Seth
was born (Gen. 5:3). After that –
after he was 130 years of age
– Adam continued begetting sons and
daughters eight hundred
years!
It’s almost impossible for our minds
to grasp, in this fast-moving,
short-lived world of one or two
children to a family, how many
children Adam and Eve probably had
during their great span of life,
nearly a thousand years. It’s hard
for us to realize that Adam lived
almost ONE-SIXTH of all the time
from his creation until now. Yes,
there must have been plenty
of young women for wives for Cain,
and Seth, and all their many other
brothers, as the hundreds of years
dragged along!
Let us also remember that it was
not wrong to marry a sister or
brother in the beginning. No
physical harm would result. Over
two thousand years later—in the days
of Abraham – a man could still marry
a half sister. It was not until the
days of Moses that God forbade
brothers to marry their half sisters
(Lev. 18:6, 11).
Back in those antediluvian days,
when people lived seven, eight, and
nine hundred years, they did not age
as we do today. They were able to
continue bearing children,
undoubtedly, for hundreds of years.
After the flood, due to human
dissipation and living contrary to
God’s revealed right laws of living,
the life span of man became
shortened.
By the time of Abraham, Sarah was
considered too old to bear children
at age 90, and Abraham thought it
impossible for him to become a
father again at the age of 100 (see
Gen. 17:17). Isaac was born as a
direct miracle. But back before the
flood, and in the days of Adam, it
was different – and would be today,
had not men departed from the laws
of living revealed by God. May God
help us to STUDY to learn those laws
and start living by them today. |
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