Anyone know who Cains wife was?

Question

Someone quoted recently the following verse "and Cain knew his wife..." by my reckoning the only other women around was Eve. Is this quote correct, and what evidence to the contrary do you have?

Answer 1

Some chick in Nod. And NO, no relation to Cain whatsoever.

Answer 2

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 bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch." (Genesis 4:16-17).

The Bible doesn't say that Cain found his wife in Nod. It says that he went to Nod and then “knew” his wife. . The word ‘knew’, means that Cain had sexual relations with his wife, who he could have been already married to when he left for Nod. (The word ‘knew’ is only used in some translations. The New American Standard Bible says “And Cain had relations with his wife…”)

If Eve’s childbearing years were about 500 and they had their first child at about the age of 50 and another child every five years, it is not outside the realm of possibility that he had sisters from whom he picked a wife even before he left.

God’s laws at the time condemned sexual relations between children and their parents but said nothing about inter-marriage between brother and sister, which apparently did not bear any evil consequences.

In the time of Adam and Eve the genetic pool was pristine and close marriages didn’t pose the problem the do today. However by the time of Moses (a few thousand years later), degenerative mistakes would have built up in the human race to such an extent that it was necessary for God to forbid close relative marriages, which makes perfect biological sense. Also, there were plenty of people on the earth by then, and there was no reason for close relations to marry.)

Answer 3

Genesis 4:17 says, "Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch." Who was his wife? It is implied in the biblical text that Cain married one of his sisters. Several facts lead us to this conclusion.
First, it is clear that Adam and Eve had a number of children. Genesis 5:4 says, "After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters." Since Adam and Eve were the first man and woman, and since God had commanded them (and their descendants) to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28), it seems reasonable to conclude that Cain married one of his many sisters. It is also possible that he married a niece or even a grandniece.
One must keep in mind that in the early years of the human race there were no genetic defects that had yet developed as a result of the fall of man. By the time of Abraham, God had not yet declared this kind of marriage to be contrary to His will (see Genesis 20:12). Laws governing incest apparently did not become enacted until the time of Moses (Lev 18:7-17; 20:11,12,14,17,20,21). Hence, there was no prohibition regarding marrying a sister (or niece or grandniece) in the days of Cain.
To learn more on this subject you can go to http://www.answersingenesis.org

Answer 4

Practically everyone says that he married his sister and that Adam and Eve were the first and only couple at one time. But, if you read Genesis 1-26 it says that God created men and women simultaneously in his or actually "our" image, male and female created he them. This implies a race of men and women were created to inhabit the earth and were given dominion over the earth. They were hunter/gatherers, a nomadic race of humans.
Later in Genesis ch. 2 AFTER God rested it says he made a Garden in the East of Eden where he placed the fruits of the earth that were good to eat BUT he saw there was no man to til the earth (a farmer) So he then created Adam from the earth and breathed life into him, giving him a soul. Later he made Eve from a rib taken from Adam while he slept.
When Cain left Eden and met his wife. she was from the nomadic people that existed where else but Nod.

Answer 5

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.Cain's parents lived loooong and had many children. Their children had children, and so on and so forth. Cain lived a long time. We do not know the order or chronology or number in total of the immediate number of children of Adam and Eve. We do not know for certain the time after the first born of them when Cain took a wife. My presumption would be that Cain's wife's name was Mrs. Cain.

Answer 6

His wife was from the land of Nod ("Nod" means "wandering," if I remember correctly). It also says somewhere in the Genesis account that Adam and Eve had lots of sons and daughters besides the three given names. So, take your pick of any apologist explanation: YHWH made more people after A & E, who inhabited Nod, or Cain married his sister.

Answer 7

It is so fun to read when Christians try to explain away the glaring contradictions in the bible.

In the case of Cain they are generally left with incest which they claim to abhor but when it’s convenient to explain a contradiction, they embrace it . Awwwh it’s OK. (we need this one)

The answer is in the bible. God made Adam out of dirt. He/She thought better and for Eve decided to use organic material since dirt doesn’t make a very advanced life form.

So he took a rib from Adam ( and since the redactors of the bible decided to add this little bit – uninformed people and true believers actually believe that men are one rib short). We can assume that not many true believers actually make it to med School and the handful that somehow do…are very surprised in anatomy class.

So Adam and Eve( the person not made from dirt) manage to procreate and have two sons, Cain and Able. The piss ant Cain manages to kill his only brother leaving (kitchen math here that even fundies ought to be able to calculate) three people on the planet that god just made a couple of days before.

Lets see…Adam is still alive, Eve the organic one still alive and the murderer Cain, by my kitchen math that makes three humans on earth, this according to “the inerrant word a god” as they are fond of claiming.

The story then goes on to say that Cain went to a nearby village (Nod) and married a wife and had a kid.

To read or listen to Christians try to weasel out of this first of a multitude of contradictions is generally entertaining if not a little pathetic.
Actually, Nod was more of a resort area and the condos were plentiful and apparently the future Mrs. Cain’s daddy from a nearby town had bought one for her, the apple of his eye; no not the apple god warned about, that one made people too smart to buy into all this god stuff and you can see why apples were forbidden for several years after the story first hit the publishers.

Jim D

Answer 8

Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters. Cains wife was a sister.
It's in the bible.

Cain went into banishment in “the land of Fugitiveness to the east of Eden,” taking with him his wife, an anonymous daughter of Adam and Eve. (Ge 4:16, 17; compare 5:4, also the much later example of Abraham’s marriage to his half sister Sarah, Ge 20:12.) Following the birth of his son Enoch, Cain “engaged in building a city,” naming it for his son. Such city may have been but a fortified village by present standards, and the record does not state when it was completed. His descendants are listed in part and include men who distinguished themselves in nomadic stock raising, the playing of musical instruments, and the forging of metal tools as well as those who were known for their practice of polygamy and their violence. (Ge 4:17-24) Cain’s line ended with the global Flood of Noah’s day.

Answer 9

Where did Cain get his wife if there was just one family?

Gen. 3:20: “Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she had to become the mother of everyone living.” (So all humans were to be the offspring of Adam and Eve.)

Gen. 5:3, 4: “Adam lived on for a hundred and thirty years. Then he became father to a son in his likeness, in his image, and called his name Seth. And the days of Adam after his fathering Seth came to be eight hundred years. Meanwhile he became father to sons and daughters.” (One of Adam’s sons was Cain, and one of Adam’s daughters must have become Cain’s wife. At that time in human history when humans still had outstanding physical health and vitality, as indicated by the length of their lives, the likelihood of passing on defects as a result of marrying a close relative was not great. After some 2,500 years of human history, however, when mankind’s physical condition had greatly deteriorated, Jehovah gave to Israel laws forbidding incest.)

Gen. 4:16, 17: “Cain went away from the face of Jehovah and took up residence in the land of Fugitiveness [or, Nod] to the east of Eden. Afterward Cain had intercourse with his wife [“knew his wife,” that is, intimately so, KJ, RS; “lay with his wife,” NE] and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch.” (Notice that Cain did not first meet his wife in the land to which he fled, as if she were from another family. Rather, it was there that he had sexual relations with her to produce a son.)

Answer 10

>>by my reckoning the only other women around was Eve.<<

There were other sons and daughters (Genesis 5:4).

Answer 11

If you believe a rabbinical statement from the Ancients, Cain would have married one of the daughters of Lillith.