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3. Cain married a non-relative, because there were such around. The Biblical basis for saying this is that Genesis chapter one speaks of the the creation of Man as the creation of a race and not necessarily as the creation of an individual (see Genesis 1:26-30). Man is spoken of as 'them' in verses 26, 27 and 28. That the human race was created in chapter one is undoubtedly true but it could well have been only one man and one woman, although the wording would not in itself preclude there being more. If we say there were a number of males and females created we run up against the fact that Genesis two contains not the slightest suggestion that there was originally more than one pair and then there is the statement of Adam that Eve was the mother of all living to explain away. |
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In support of the idea that there were other humans created at the same time as Adam and Eve or soon after, it may be urged that Cain was to be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. Cain said that everyone that finds him would slay him. Does this mean just the family of Adam ? What about the city Cain built. Was it only for his immediate family ? Even if we allow that the city was small by to-days standards and that Cain probably lived for a long time it is still difficult to see how he could have built a city without a significant number of helpers. As to Cain's statement that everyone who found him would slay him it may be pointed out that this does not suggest a large world population, that is, one so large that Cain could have been lost in the crowd ! However, it would be unwise to give much weight to Cain's statement (Genesis 4:14) as Cain was very likely exaggerating, as people who have gone off the rails often do. Cain could only be slain once. There may well be explanations for the problems mentioned above which have not been revealed to us and therefore we should be careful not to dogmatise in presenting our own possible explanations. |
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4. Following on from 3 above it may be speculated that God made a wife for Cain in the same or a similar way that he did for Adam. There is no statement or suggestion in Scripture that He did so, but we cannot assume from the silence of Scripture that He did not do so. If God had provided a wife for Cain in the way He did for Adam it would not have violated the statement that Eve was the mother of all living. Some may doubt that God would have gone to the trouble of specially making a wife for one such as Cain, but He might have done so before Cain's sin. God makes his sun rise on evil and good (Matthew 5:45), so we cannot say that God would have left Cain without providing a suitable wife for him in some way. |
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What the foregoing would lead us to maintain is that though we are not told who Cain married we do know that he had sisters. This should silence any critic who maintains that there was no one around who he could have married, but at the same time we can point out that Scripture does not positively say that he married one of his sisters and that therefore there may have been some other woman provided by God who became Cain's wife. The same problem arises, though perhaps not in quite such an acute way, as regards Seth and Adam's other sons and daughters. |
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October 2000 |
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