Questions about the Bible: 10. Where did Cain get his wife?
Where did Cain get his wife?
This question makes me laugh! It is one that has been asked for years, usually in the pub, or the school common room or staff canteen. It’s asked by people who haven’t read the Bible (because the answer is clear in the first couple of pages) and by asking it they are really making a statement, ‘I haven’t read the Bible and don’t believe it, and this question is my excuse.’
It is quite sad that that is the case. My fear in answering this question is that the people asking this particular one don’t really want to take God’s Word seriously. In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, we read that Adam and Eve, after having two sons, Cain and Abel, also had a son called Seth. As we read on we are told that Adam also had ‘many other sons and daughters…’ (Genesis 5 v. 4)
Cain therefore married one of his sisters. Marriage between such close family relations is unacceptable and problematic for us today. Professor Verna Wright of Leeds University explained, ‘At the beginning of the human race this was all right. Later, when inter-marriage could be dangerous because of the likelihood of disease-producing recessive genes manifesting themselves, the Bible laid down clear guidelines about this – a remarkable provision when the science of genetics was unknown.’
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