Red Expendable

Does anyone know WHO Cain's wife was supposed to be?

It's not indicated. Since, this would be one of the very first marriages ever, and you would think that this would be important enough at least to mention her name.

Anyone have any clue?

Also, could someone please tell me where this wife came from. Since at the time, only 4 human beings were 'created' at this point in the biblical story, and one of them, was killed by Cain himself.

Also, marrying, Cain is supposedly to have built a city. But who lived in this city? And how big was it? There were no other people on the planet except for Adam, Eve, and Cain, and his mysterious wife who has no name and came from nowhere.....

Confused (but not really)
RedEx

DrJim

The traditional response is that it is extremely impolite to ask after another man's wife...


JRL

Artemus

've always suspected that the Adam+Eve and Cain+Abel stories were originally completely independent, and at some point they were joined together with no effort to make the details consistent.

Toto

I think this thread contains everything that can be said on the subject:

Did Cain Marry His Sister?

The Midge

Genesis is anoyingly brief. Perhaps Readers Digest got to it Just because she is not mentioned does not mean she does not exist.

Paradox

The Bible tends to have such a low opinion of women, they were not considered important enought to mention - even for occasions as significant as that. That's an embarrassing apologetic that Christians would rather not use though.

mrmoderate

This is so true. It would seem that Genesis was really just not that important to the Mosaic story of God's relationship with His chosen people.

There are however too many of these obscure passages in Genesis to just ignore them and it is just too convenient to follow the fundamentalist take on Genesis.

Personally, I believe that Genesis hints heavily to two creations of man. I believe that Genesis gives us the quicky version of the creation of the physical world including mankind in the first chapter of Genesis.

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

In this passage God is speaking in a plural sense. Since God is not a physical entity, but rather spiritual, I would think that God was stating that man should be spiritual like He/They are. Who are the others? We are not told but Christianity uses this to make claim that Jesus was there in the beginning with God and is part of the "us/our" usage of identifying God.

My feelings are that mankind was on earth way before Adam and Eve. These two don't come into the story until the second chapter of Genesis, after mankind has already been made in God's image.

Could it be that God became discouraged with the way His first creation of mankind was going and He decided to creeate a race that would be His chosen people to rule over the existing mankind?

Maybe Adam and Eve were simply a second attempt of God to create a better freewill creature. Maybe God figured that if He gave Adam and Eve a more stable environment that they would better obey Him and become a more controllable race that still had free will to choose to love and obey God by their own choice. Maybe.

Genesis 3 shows that the latest and greatest race is also fallible and Adam and Eve are kicked out of the perfect environment and into the world with the other humans.

The assumed little first family looses all benefits when Cain kills his brother. Were the Eden family isolated from the rest of mankind at this time? It would seem so. Were they aware that there were others in the world? Genesis 4:14 certain suggest so; "Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth and whoever finds me will kill me."

God then acknowledges Cain's concerns and continues talking with Cain about these "other" people.

Some questions here are; why was where Cain and his parents lived a place where God was if it was no longer Eden and why would Cain be hidden from God once he was no longer in that place?

To answer the OP, Cain married one of the women from the existing peoples that lived in the land of Nod.

Madkins007

Concerning the entire creation story, Cain, etc., I have always wondered if there is anywhere it definitively states that God created Adam and EVE ONLY, and not other people elsewhere. This was a question that come up in one brainstorming session on this issue (along with the more common 'we don't know how many kids Eve had' option).

ThePhoenix

Both the Adam and Eve and the Able and Cain stories have very important moral lessons to teach. Their status as literal events is questionable.

callmejay

Yes, don't learn anything and do what you're told. (Tree of Knowledge.)

Also, don't kill your brother.