Where did Cain get his wife?

[dizzy_dave]

In Genesis 4:17 where did Cain get his wife from if Adam, Eve, Cain and Able were the only people on earth? How did he build a city, I would think that would be hard to do by yourself.

 

[everlastingthur]

dizzy_dave:

In Genesis 4:17 where did Cain get his wife from if Adam, Eve, Cain and Able were the only people on earth? How did he build a city, I would think that would be hard to do by yourself.

Of course Cain had children with of his family members. This may sound disturbing, but there was no shame in it. They were ordered to be fruitful and multiply. There was no “girl next door.” Adam, Eve, Cain, and Able weren’t the only people on earth. The Bible doesn’t mention every child they had. Cain building a city, wouldn’t mean that he necessarily built it all by himself. Nor does it mean that it as large as the cities we think of. I’m neither an exegete nor a historian but this is the way I’ve understood it.

 

[Elliott]

Cain’s wife was most likely his sister. This was before the law was given to forbid it. It was permissable and necessary.

 

[DaveBj]

Elliott:

Cain’s wife was most likely his sister. This was before the law was given to forbid it. It was permissable and necessary.

And since both Cain and his sister would have been children of Adam, whose body (including its genetic code) had been created perfect, there would have been no genetic problems of the kind that crop up nowadays in the children born to sibling relationships.

Note further that Abraham was married to his half-sister, but that relationship was forbidden in the Mosaic law of several hundred years later.

DaveBj