Where did Cain get his wife? Every person who has read the first few chapters of the Bible carefully has asked this question. The answer is not as elusive as skeptics make it seem. It’s quite simple. Not only will we learn the answer in this study, but we will also learn a valuable lesson for our Bible study along the way.
Attention, Sunday school students! Let’s review the first four chapters of the Bible. The first people God created were Adam and Eve. They had two sons: Cain and Abel. Cain got mad at Abel, and killed him. As a result, Cain had to become a fugitive. But Cain was concerned that “anyone who finds me will kill me” (Genesis 4:14), and “Cain went out from the presence of the LORD and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch” (vv. 16–17). After that, Adam and Eve had another son named Seth, who also found a lady and had children with her.
Hold up. If Adam, Eve, and Cain were the only people on earth, who in the world was Cain afraid of killing him, and who did he marry?
This has been a perennial stumper: Where did Cain get his wife?
It would seem that we are left with two options: Either the Bible has a terrible plot hole, which atheists would consider a win for them. Or God must have made different people groups besides the family of Adam and Eve; therefore, the creation account cannot be taken literally, and in some cases, atheists would consider that a win as well.
There’s actually a third option staring us in the face. In order to see it, we need to strip away our biases and assumptions.
First, let’s see how the second option is not viable. God did not create other people groups besides Adam and Eve, as Genesis 3:20 says, “Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” According to the Bible, all humanity came from Eve and Adam (see also Acts 17:26). On the other hand, doesn’t the Bible claim that Cain found someone in the land of Nod to marry? Therefore, the Bible is contradictory, right? Only if you allow your assumptions to navigate your study. Let’s identify some assumptions we may have about the Genesis account.
When we see “Where did Cain get his wife?” as a stumper question, it’s because:
- We are assuming that Cain and Abel were the only children of Adam and Eve when Cain killed his brother. The Bible does not say that. For all we know, Cain and Abel had many siblings when Cain committed murder.
- We are assuming that Cain and Abel were the first children Adam and Eve had. The Bible does not say that. It’s possible Cain and Abel had many older siblings by the time Genesis 4 opens.
- We are assuming that Cain found his wife in the land of Nod. The Bible does not say that. He may have been married with children and grandchildren when he murdered his brother (the Bible also does not say Enoch was Cain’s firstborn).
There have been many times my assumptions have blinded me to the truth. In addition, enemies of the Scripture will sometimes bake assumptions into their questions to make it easier for them to confuse Bible readers and win an argument.
Try to follow this reasoning. One day, my good friend Jeff told me that he has a son named James. But I know for a fact that he has a son named Jacob. Jeff was clearly lying to me; therefore, you should never believe anything Jeff says. To which you say, “Really?” In this case, it’s clear for you to see the problem with jumping to conclusions based on assumptions, but are you just as careful when people do that to Scripture? Someone says, “The Bible claims Cain was a son of the first two people, Adam and Eve. The Bible also says Cain interacted with people on earth other than his parents; therefore, the Bible is untrustworthy.”
Really?
Picture what the world was like when Cain killed Abel. If you’re like me, you may be inclined to believe that there were only four people on earth at the time. Afterward, Cain went to Nod, and that’s where he found his wife. Again, not so fast. Cain was likely already married when he left home. But where did his wife come from? Who did he marry? Brace yourself for the big reveal… He married his sister or niece.
Cain, Abel, and Seth were not the only children of Adam and Eve. Why don’t we know the details of all of their siblings? It’s simply that God saw that it was important that Bible readers know about those three specifically.
After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.
Genesis 5:4
When Adam and Eve were created, God told them to “be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28). Adam was 130 years old when he had Seth. If Adam and Eve were able to produce children from the beginning, and the commandment was for them to fill the earth, it’s reasonable to conclude that they produced many more than three children during those 130 years. Additionally, their children would have also been responsible for being fruitful and multiplying to fill the earth.
The first people on earth would have procreated with their own family members. That sounds weird and “icky” to us. Not only does it sound gross, but isn’t it actually problematic, against the law, and even against Scripture, to have intercourse with a close family member? Yes, it is today, for many reasons, including the risk of physical and mental genetic disorders or death of infants conceived in these relationships. The first family, however, did not have the mutations in the genome that we have today. In fact, it wasn’t until thousands of years later, when God established the covenant with Israel through Moses, that incest was officially off-limits.
Questions are what drive our Bible study. God’s not afraid of our questions. As Bible students and teachers, however, we are sometimes are afraid of questions we cannot answer. First, when you feel stumped, ask, “What assumptions may be getting in the way?” Second, remember this: Although there are questions we should be asking (and the Bible gives us answers to those questions), the Bible was not written to satisfy our curiosity. Nor does the Bible include every detail. If it did, how big would the Bible be? Notice:
Then she [Eve] bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
Genesis 4:2
How many years are packed into this one verse? Abel was born, and then he became a keeper of sheep. How old was he when he started shepherding? What was his favorite food? What color was his hair? Why was he a shepherd and Cain a farmer?
When we study the Bible, we will often come across questions that the Bible does not specifically address. In many cases, we can still come to a proper conclusion, like the question of Cain’s wife. Sometimes, we won’t. That’s okay, but be careful not to assume the answer if the Bible has nothing to say on a matter. And be careful about letting your or someone else’s assumptions back you into a corner. Because of some people’s bad assumptions, the question of Cain’s wife has been weaponized against believers. When we look closer at the Bible and remove the veil of assumption, however, we realize that the answer has been staring us in the face. Cain married his sister or niece.
Here’s another claim that’s full of assumptions. Have you ever heard someone claim that the thief on the cross wasn’t baptized? If so, learn how presumptuous that claim is in this article.