Who Was Cain’s Wife? It is important for us to start by pointing to the fact that Cain and Abel were not the only children that Adam and Eve had. Cain and Abel were Adam and Eve’s first two children but they had many, many more children. During the days of Adam and Eve, life spans covered centuries, meaning Adam and Eve had many children and these children grew and spread out and equally had many children of their own. From the different indications at hand, by the time Cain was able to take a wife, there must have been dozens, perhaps even a hundred or more people living on the earth.
Genesis 1:28 says, “God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground”
In Genesis 1:28, we observe two key points: “Be fruitful and increase in number” and also they were to “fill the earth.” Since there was limited space and resources where Adam and Eve lived and the fact that they had many children, they must have spread. In Genesis 4:16, we are told that after Cain murdered his brother Abel, God sent him away and he ended up settling down in the east of Eden. While in the east of Eden, Cain had intercourse with his wife and they bore a child whom they named Enoch (Genesis 4:17). It is at this very location that Cain built a city and we can assume that if he built an entire city, there must have been many other people living there already or at least nearby.
Who was Cain’s Wife?
By the time Cain was an adult and was sent away by God, Adam and Eve must have had many other children. Adam and Eve’s descendants, probably in hundreds are likely to have been spread out and multiplied around the areas of Eden. There is no doubt that Cain married a relative of his parents, Adam and Eve but since Adam and Eve were blessed by God and they were fruitful and multiplied and their descendants spread out over the earth, there was no difficulty in Cain finding a wife. With life spans of over 900 years for the first human beings, this definitely gave sufficient time to have numerous children who in their turn had their own children and so on. That is, Adam and Eve’s numerous children had their own children who became Adam and Eve’s grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so forth.
While the Bible does not specifically tell us who Cain’s wife was, it’s clear that his wife was his sister or niece or great-niece, etc. Notice that the Bible does not say how old Cain was when he killed Abel (Genesis 4:8). Since Cain and Abel were both farmers, we can assume that they were likely full-grown adults, possibly with families of their own. Adam and Eve are likely to have given birth to more children than just Cain and Abel at the time that Abel was killed. They definitely had many more children later (Genesis 5:4). As a matter of fact, Cain being scared for his own life after he killed Abel (Genesis 4:14) indicates that there were likely many other children and perhaps even grandchildren of Adam and Eve already living at that time. Cain’s wife (Genesis 4:17) was likely a daughter or granddaughter of Adam and Eve.
More facts
Notice that since Adam and Eve were the first (and only) human beings, their children would have no other choice than to intermarry. As a matter of fact, the Lord God did not forbid inter-family marriage until much later when there were enough people to make intermarriage unnecessary (Leviticus 18:6-18). The reason that incest today often results in genetic abnormalities is that when two people of similar genetics (a brother and sister) have children together, there is a very high risk of their recessive characteristics becoming dominant. On the other hand, when people from different families have children, it is highly unlikely that both parents will carry the same recessive traits. Over the centuries, the human genetic code has become increasingly “polluted” as genetic defects are multiplied, amplified, and passed down from generation to generation.
Adam and Eve being the first humans to be created by the Lord God did not have any genetic defects, and that enabled them and the first few generations of their descendants to have a far greater quality of health than we do in our own days. Adam and Eve’s children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren had few, if any, genetic defects. As a result, it was safe for them to intermarry. And this is what they likely did until much later when there were enough people to make inter-family marriage unnecessary.
