According to the interpretation or accounts in
the Book of Genesis’ first chapter of
the Holy Scripture’s “New American
Standard Bible” (NASB) version, shortly after Cain Killed Abel he was
banished from the Garden of Eden and
forced into the infamous Land of Nod where
he by some means found a woman who agreed to marry him. One can only assume she was aware that he had
killed his brother; “a global first”.
Skeptics have used Cain's wife time and again
to discredit the Book of Genesis as a
factual historical record. For the true believer, it is unfortunately that the
average Christian has not been able to give an adequate answer to the
question—where’d she come from?
Common Sense suggests 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. This question is a major stumbling block to
accepting the creation account in Genesis and its record of only one man and
woman at the beginning of human history—a record on which most Old and New Testament doctrines depend.
Here’s the New American Standard Bible’s abbreviated
account of creation and the banishment of Cain from the “Garden of Eden” sometime prior to Adam (the
first man) & Eve’s (the first woman) eventual
exit from the “Garden”:
Genesis 1:1
. . . In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 2:7
. . . “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”.
Genesis 2:15
. . . “Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden
to cultivate it and keep it”.
Genesis 2:20
. . . “The man (Adam) 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”.
Genesis 2:21
. . . “So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man (Adam), and he
slept; then He (God) took one of
his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. 2: 22 . . . “The Lord God fashioned into a
woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man”.
Genesis 4:1
. . . Now the man (Adam) had relations with his wife Eve and she conceived and gave birth
to Cain, and she said, "I have
gotten a man-child with the help of the Lord." 4:2 . . . “Again, she gave
birth to his brother Abel”.
Genesis 4:8
. . . “And it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against
Abel his brother and killed him”.
Genesis 4:16
. . . “Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the
land of Nod, east of Eden”. 4:17 . . .
“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”.
Just in case you’d like to know, Enoch the city
was a pre-Flood town; it is the first “city” mentioned in Biblical Scriptures .
. . it was probably located somewhere east of Eden most likely in the region
known as the Land of Nod; regrettably, nothing else is known about it.
The conventional thought regarding where Cain’s
bride came to be goes something like this:
Although only these three males are cited by
name (Cain, Abel, and Seth), Adam and Eve
had several other kids; one Jewish historian (Josephus),
set the number at thirty-three (33) sons and
twenty-three (23) daughters. If you think a total of fifty-three (53) children is excessive; keep in mind that
according to Genesis 5:5, Adam lived for
930 years and too Adam and Eve were commanded to “Be fruitful, and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).
Logic dictates that if we work entirely from
Scripture, at the onset, there was only the first generation of humans around
to procreate, so you see, brothers would have had to marry sisters in order to
be fruitful, and multiply; otherwise there would be no possibility of future generations!
Genesis simply fails
to mention when Cain married or if he already had a sister or sisters of child-bearing
age when he was banished to The Land of Nod. In fact the same holds true for the details
of other marriages amongst the children of Adam and Eve. Regardless we can-not reasonably deny that some
brothers had to marry their sisters in the early years of human kind’s history,
be it Cain or his multitude of brothers and sisters.
Yes it’s true that many people immediately
reject the conclusion that Adam and Eve’s sons and daughters married each other
by citing the Jewish law against the marriage of close relatives. But this was
not the case until
the time of Moses (Leviticus 18-20) many years later; so technically anybody—brother,
sister, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece—even mother & father was considered fair
game in the earliest of days!
There is however an alternative to such
statutory crimes
being an absolute necessity for the increase in the numbers of man-kind . . .
where-in the biblical text of Genesis
suggests that Adam had a wife prior to
Eve. This most likely developed from
an interpretation of the Book of Genesis and its “apparent” dual creation
accounts: wherein, Genesis 1:27 &
1:28 indicates that both man and woman was created at the same time: 1:27 . . . “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 1:28 . . . God blessed them; and God said to
them, "Be fruitful and multiply . . .”
Jewish folklore identifies this female as Lilith
(Latin – Lami) and is described as Adam’s
first wife, who was created at about the same time and from the same earthen clay as Adam. In the 13th
Century writings of Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen, Lilith is said to have left
Adam after she refused to become subservient to him (in
that she refusal to agree to the missionary position with him during sex), and
ultimately refused to stay in the Garden
of Eden. This allegedly occurred shortly
after she mated with archangel Samael, who in Jewish mysticism was
the angel of death.
For her, shall we say “discrepancies”; she
was eventually banished from the Garden
of Eden too; perhaps to the Land of Nod
Sources:
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