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.
Defenders of the gospel must be able to show that all human beings are descendants of one man and one woman (Adam and Eve) — as only those people who are descendants of Adam and Eve can be saved. Thus, believers need to be able to account for Cain’s wife and show clearly that she was a descendant of Adam and Eve.
First, let’s establish that Adam was the first human ever created.
Genesis 2:7-8, 18-20, “Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. And the LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed…Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.’ And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.”
The New Testament affirms that Adam was the first man created -
1 Corinthians 15:45, “So also it is written, ‘The first MAN, Adam, BECAME A LIVING SOUL.’
1 Timothy 2:13, “For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve.”
Now, it is extremely important to acknowledge that Adam was the first man created. This is because the Gospel is predicated on that point. Romans 5:12 reads - “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men.” The physical 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. 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.
God provided the solution—a way to deliver man from his wretched state. Paul explains in that God provided another Adam! The Son of God took on a human nature. Jesus Christ, in His humanity, was a descendant of Adam. He thus became our relation! He is called ‘the last Adam’ (1Corinthians 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: 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, “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.” Christ suffered death (the penalty for sin) on the cross, shedding his blood 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. Romans 5:17-19, “For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.”
If Adam was not the first man and father of the whole human race, the Gospel fails to make any sense. If there are human beings that do not descend from Adam, then they should not be subject to Adam’s penalty of physical death. And, if they are not subject to sin and death, they have no need for a Savior.
Since the Bible describes all human beings as sinners, except the God-Man Jesus, and we are all related (Acts 17:26, “He made from one, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth.”), 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.
This means that Cain’s wife had to be a descendant of Adam.
Now, let’s establish that Cain’s wife was the descendant of Adam’s wife Eve. In Genesis 3:20 we read, ‘Now the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.’ In other words, all people are descendants of Adam and Eve—she was the first woman. She is the mother of the human race.
We are told in Genesis 2:20-24 that Eve was formed from the rib of Adam because Adam could not find a mate suitable for him. There was no one of his kind - another human being. 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.
Again, we quote 1 Timothy 2:13, “For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve.”
Thus, Cain’s wife had to be a descendant of Adam and Eve.
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, we read, “the days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other 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 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, too, that they were commanded to ‘Be fruitful, and multiply’ (Genesis 1:28).
Cain’s Wife
If we now work totally from Scripture, 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.
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. Based purely on the Scripture record, 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. Every person has two sets of genes that specify how a person is put together and functions. Each person inherits one gene from each parent. Unfortunately, genes today contain many mistakes or mutations (because of sin and the Curse), and these mistakes show up in a variety of ways.
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.
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.
However, 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), their genes were perfect -no mistakes or mutations! But, when sin entered the world, 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). Also, there were plenty of people on the Earth by now, and there was no reason for close relations to marry.
We will close our study by looking at one more issue….
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 - “Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. And Cain had relations with his wife and she conceived, and gave birth to Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city Enoch, after the name of his son.”
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. He didn’t find a wife there, but he had sexual relations with his wife and had Enoch. It is quite likely that he was married before he killed Abel and received his punishment.
