Must be something in the water. There’s a
Cain thread on the other forum. But it is relevant. If I recall correctly, Josephus in his
Antiquities claims that Cain invented money – both to operate his city, and to invent usurious interest and such money sins.
Genesis tells us Cain invented both sacrifice and murder; why are people insistent that he couldn’t have committed incest.
(There’s an old saying that you can tell whether a Christian is liberal or conservative by saying the word
SIN. Like Pavlov’s dogs, they will salivate. But the conservatives will salivate the word “sex” and liberals will salivate the word “money.”)
Scripture does give us an answer. Eve was “the mother of all living” (
Gen. 3:20). So Cain’s wife was descended from Eve.
Adam was alone in the Gan [The Garden of Eden]. God introduced all the beasts, but no companion was found for the man. So God made Eve (
Gen. 2:18-23).
The word that the KJV translates as “helpmeet” is ezer/azer. (Hebrew had no vowels.) It doesn’t mean “June Cleaver style of wife” or even “mate.” It means helper. God refers to Himself in Scripture as Israel’s *ezer * (from which we get the name “Ebenezer”). But it doesn’t mean that God was outranked in the relationship.
We mention this because
Gen. 2:18-23 shows that Adam found no other humans at all. A wife would qualify as an
ezer, but so would a brother. It was God’s good pleasure to create an ezer that Adam could marry – but God could have given Adam both a wife and a brother, and Scripture would use the same term
ezer until they did something to distinguish themselves from each other.
In the New Testament it is frequently emphasized that all humans are descended from Adam. If that were not so, that God would have to find some other way besides the intervention of Christ to save those beings that were unrelated to Adam.
So yes, Cain’s wife had to be descended from both Adam and Eve. The obvious candidates were a sister or, much less likely, a niece. After Cain had sinned, it would be unlikely that his siblings would want to give a daughter to him in marriage.
Gen. 5:4 reminds us that Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters. Some sources say 30 sons & 30 daughters. Others say 33 sons and 23 daughters. (I don’t know why, sorry.)
Basically, the reader can believe the Biblical account, disbelieve, have doubts, ignore, or other, but that’s different from saying that the Bible didn’t have an answer. It didn’t give a name – Jubilees claims it was Awan, FWIW – but that’s different from an answer to the question.
I don’t think the issue is literalism, at least not by itself. I think the issue is the one raised in the “Scopes monkey trial.” The reason they didn’t have an answer is that they may have been too dainty to admit that if Cain married a sister, then Seth did too. And everyone wants to be descended from the “good” son, and nobody from the “bad” one.
Unfortunately, neither Antediluvian committed incest or else both did. I say that both did. As for the reason why, I think it goes back to not having any human alive who isn’t descended from both Adam and Eve (as per the issue of whom Christ came here to save).
As a child I was told that God may have created mates for Cain and for Seth to prevent them from committing incest. Some even said God gave them spirit wives!
But that would mean that Christ would have to do something different to save us, since we’d only be saved on the Adamic half of our family tree.
(Robert Graves wrote a few books on that one.) I just found it interesting that this was the first time, last time, and only time I’d heard that particular allegation. It would be like crediting Cain for the Recession, or something.