How anyone could have ever asked such a question as “Where did Cain get his wife?” is flummoxing enough, but how such a question has persisted for millennia is the stuff of utter dismay.
A specific Google search for the particular question in quotes thusly, “Where did Cain get his wife?” yields 53,200 results (which means that the results may not account for the question being asked in different words).
Indeed, in every generation someone comes across the question and thinks that they have hit upon the silver bullet that will finally do away with the Bible. Thus, in every generation they ask, “Where did Cain get his wife?”
Also, using “Where did Cain get his wife?” many go on to concoct fanciful answers, theories, speculations, etc. from that the Bible hints at a pre-Adamic or extra-Adamic race to ideas about aliens and genetic manipulations, etc., etc., etc. (UFOs and Aliens).
Let us back up a moment and set the stage as these days actually reading the Bible—by the way, that is the key as the answer lays therein—if out of style and relying on foggy memories from Sunday School are thought to suffice.
YHVH created Adam and Eve—see Genesis 1:26-27, 2:15, 22.
In Genesis 4:1 we are told:
Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the LORD.”
That’s one offspring (the third person on Earth).
In Genesis 4:2 we are told:
Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
That’s two offspring (the fourth person on Earth).
In Genesis 4:8 we are told:
Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.
We are back to three people on Earth.
But then, suddenly in Genesis 4:14 we are told that Cain told YHVH:
Surely You have driven me out this day from the face of the ground; I shall be hidden from Your face; I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, and it will happen [that] anyone who finds me will kill me.
Thus, along with the question “Where did Cain get his wife?” comes the question, “Who else was there who would kill Cain? (Adam or Eve perhaps?).
In Genesis 4:16-17 we are told: Then 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. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son–Enoch.
“Where did Cain get his wife?”
This is all very mysterious if: 1) you do not actually read and/or re-read the text and 2) if you “read” it in the manner which we have quoted it which is out of context as we jumped from Genesis 4:1-2 to verse 8, then to 14 and to 16-17. A text out of context makes a pretext for a prooftext.
Firstly, note that we are all related, regardless of “race,” as Eve is “the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20) and, of course, we know that this refer to all living humans as the context makes clear that creatures (that is, created beings) reproduce after/according to their kind (repeated some 18 times in Genesis as a whole).
We are told that Adam and Eve had two sons: Abel and Cain (after they left the Garden of Eden).
We are not told that these are their first two children although they may very well be (perhaps they were the first males).
Perhaps we are told about these two because their lives have a lesson to teach us.
Even if they were the first two offspring, they had other children after them, Seth is mentioned (Genesis 4:25—yet never as their “third” child), others are not mentioned. But here is where the holes in the un-contextual retelling are filled in as we keep in mind (or learn for the first time) that in one single chapter, Genesis 4, we are told of: The birth of Abel The birth of Cain The murder of Abel Cain’s punishment Cain and his wife bare Enoch Enoch has children They have children Another murder is committed Adam and Eve bare Seth
Etc., etc., etc.
Therefore, as is obvious, a great deal of time passes—circa seven generations (however long they were)—and we are only given specific important details rather than biographies of each. The context shows that it is unnecessary to think, or demand, that Adam and Even had child one: Able, child two: Cain, child three: Seth. Rather, the context shows that many offspring are being produced, many generations pass by, in one single chapter (not to mention the others) and one specific details are being focused upon.
Therefore, there were plenty of people for Cain to marry and who might kill Cain. Thus, the question “Where did Cain get his wife?” is done away with. Cain could have been a close or distant relative of hers, a cousin, an uncle or even her brother.
Lastly, let us consider a side note about marrying and reproducing with a close (or distant) relative as we must ask about incest and the gene pool factor.
One answer is in the realm of morality and the other biology.
Morally there was nothing wrong with a person reproducing with someone of their own family because YHVH is the law maker, the creator of morality, and He gives no law against incest (as far as we know) until centuries later in the time of Moses.
Genetically it is not a problem as their DNA was so very close to perfect (so close to the perfectly created Adam and Eve) that genetic errors, such as mutations, were simply not an issue
And so, the answer to “Where did Cain get his wife?” is right there where it has been all along: in the Bible—who would’a thunk it?
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