God’s Proof (www.godsproof.com) ^{Volume: 1 Issue: 4}

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.

Genesis 4:17

Who was Cain’s wife and where did she come from? In 1925 in a Tennessee courtroom, the ACLU lawyer, Clarence Darrow, asked William Jennings Bryan, the prosecutor who stood for the Christian faith, that very question in the Scopes trial. Because Mr. Bryan was unable to give a defense, Christians, in the eyes of the world, were seen as unable to defend the biblical record.

The atheist Carl Sagan used this same question in his New York Times best selling book, Contact. In the book, the fictional character Ellie could not get answers about Cain’s wife, and other questions, from a minister’s wife, who was the leader of a church discussion group. He was using these arguments, directed at Christians, in an attempt to prove the Bible cannot be defended. Sadly most Christians cannot answer these questions; however, there are answers. Most of the churches have steered away from the teaching of apologetics, especially from the book of Genesis. Most believers in the church are not “ready always to give an answer to everyone who asks them a reason for the hope within them.” (1 Pet. 3:15)

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. For many people, this question is a stumbling block to accepting the creation account in Genesis and its record of only one man and one woman at the beginning of history – a record on which many Old and New Testament doctrines depend.

Christians must show that all human beings are descendants of one man and one woman – as only those people who are descendants of Adam and Eve can be saved. Thus we need to be able to account for Cain’s wife and show clearly that she was a descendant of Adam and Eve.

According to 1 Corinthians 15:45 Adam was the first man. Romans 5:12 shows that sin was brought in by this first man. The Bible continually makes it clear that only the descendants of Adam can be saved (1 Cor 15:22; 1 Tim 2:13; Luke 3:38; etc.). Romans 5 teaches that we are born into sin because Adam sinned. The death penalty, which Adam received as judgement for his sin of rebellion, also passed on to all his descendants. This is why Romans 3:23 says “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15 that God provided another Adam. Jesus Christ is known as the last Adam (1 Cor 15:45). He took on human flesh so that he may be that perfect sacrifice to die for that first Adam and his descendants. Therefore the gospel only makes sense 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. Jesus Christ was both God and man, yet He had no sin. The book of Hebrews amplifies how Jesus took upon himself the nature of a man to save mankind (Heb. 2:11-18).

Therefore since Adam is the first man and Eve, in Gen. 3:20, is referred to as the “mother of all living”, Cain’s wife was a descendant of Adam and Eve. The Bible only mentions Cain, Abel, and Seth by name as descendants of Adam and Eve, however, in Gen. 5:4 it states the following: “And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters”.

To answer the question as to whom was Cain’s wife; we can now see that he married his sister. Some have argued that this cannot be because the law given to Moses forbid marriage between close relatives (Lev. 18-20). This is true, however, God ordained the marriage between Abraham and Sarah, who were half brother and sister. If you think about it, since we are all descendants of one man and one woman, we all marry our relatives. We just don’t marry our close relatives; at least not in this state.

With each successive human generation the genetic code picks up deformities. As long as there are enough variations in the genetic “pool” between a man and a woman, then there is a higher chance that a bad segment of the code will not be mated with another bad segment from the other person. For a brother and sister to bare a child now would be devastating. The genetic code is too close; therefore the offspring could have mental and physical abnormalities. However, for Adam and Eve, and several generations thereafter, their genetic code had very few or no genetic anomalies. Possibly by the time the law was given to Moses the number of defects were too many to allow brothers and sisters to marry. All of this of course was brought on by the “fall of man” in the Garden of Eden. If you think about it, Adam married the female version of himself. I don’t think you can get any closer than that.

William Jennings Bryan discovered the terrible reality of not understanding the foundational teachings of creation in Genesis. If he were able to answer many questions asked by Clarence Darrow, the Scopes trial could have been used to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, rather than the false doctrine of evolution.

We are to be the light of the world, ready always to give a defense of the hope within us. If we don’t take the time to search for the answers we will never be used effectively by the Lord. For whatever reason, God has decided to use us as the means through which He will spread the gospel message to the whole world. The answers are there. If you’re struggling with these types of questions, I suggest you go to the Lord in prayer. You never know when the absense of an answer could hamper the good news of Jesus Christ.

God Bless – Jeff Sievertson