Article by: Kenneth J. Ester
Who Did Cain Marry?
Who did Cain marry? How did he get a wife? Different versions of this question come up over and over. People simply don't try to do the math. If they did, they would realize that Cain had plenty of women of child bearing ages to choose from.
Adam had his 3rd son, Seth, at the age of 130 years old. He lived to be 930 years old. The Bible never says how many children Adam had. One can only imagine he could have had quite a few in the next 800 years after Seth was born. For the fun of it, lets pretend that only 500 years of it were for procreating. Even giving Eve a three year break between each child, that is 166 kids. Consider nearly half were females who after even 14 or 15 years old could start procreating themselves. Likely sooner.
I put this into Excel. Being very conservative I feel, I went with Eve having a girl every 6 years. Each girl after she was 15 years old, she would start having a girl every 6 years as well. Each one of their kids would have girls every 6 years and so on.... By the time Adam was only 250 years old, there would be 8,385 girls in the world. That is in only 120 years of procreation. That's with having a child only once every three years and half the children being male and half being female. If on average every female had another child every year and a half, that would double the population in that 120 years. Making it 33,540 people and 16,770 of them female. That is only in 120 years. As years went by, there would be more and more having children at the same time.
To give you another way of looking at it, consider this old addition trick. If I offered you a million dollars right now, or 1 penny doubled every day for 30 days, what would you take? If you are wise, you take the pennies. If I gave you one penny today, two tomorrow, four more the next day and 8 the next and so on... in 30 days you would have a total of $5,368,709.12! Add one more day on that and it doubles again and you have $10,737,418.24! You see, at first it doesn't seem like much, but as it grows larger and continues to double, it just suddenly balloons to enormous amounts. Now picture the population doing a similar thing.
At first you would only have a few girls giving birth to girls every few years. As time goes on however, you soon have hundreds of girls giving birth to girls every few years.
The Bible never says how old Cain is when he takes a wife. Likely the cattle they had to keep to supply meat and such would have been eating up the grass so only so many people could live in one area. So they would have had to have begun spreading out. Some families would travel a distance to find good fertilization for their cattle as well as soil for their farms. If Cain was over 100 years old when he took a wife, there was very likely 20,000 to 30,000 people already and many of them adult females for him to take one as a wife.
Now obvious there will be many who will doubt this saying people just don't live that long and they don't believe Adam was 930 years old when he died. That isn't even believable.
Let me ask you, have you ever considered why we die at such an early age? No its not all of the preservatives and other chemicals we take in today. I am sure those don't help but that's not the difference from the days of Adam.
Adam and Eve were created with perfect bodies. Not necessarily in shape but I mean biologically. Their bodies were meant to live forever. When they sinned, as they say, the wages of sin is death. Their bodies began to slowly break down just like ours do today, only at a much slower pace. About one tenth the speed ours breaks down. But in order for them to populate the earth, they needed to breed with relatives. Incest at this time was not considered bad. But the problem with inner breeding is that it causes a breakdown of molecular structures.
Consider the Bull Dogs we have now. They once were taller dogs with strong builds more in the lines of the boxers we have today. Their faces were not crushed in looking. Because of inbreeding to keep them purebreds, they slowly had changes to their structure. The short hefty dogs with crooked legs and a punched in face we see today for a Bull Dog? That is just the results of inbreeding. The same thing happens with people.
Early on, people inbred to populate the earth. The bodies could handle the slight breakdowns without big results for a long time. There came a time when the bodies had too many faults with it however and that is when God laid down the rules against incest. Because He knew our bodies could not continue down that path without major problems. One of the greatest effects of all the inbreeding early on however was that over generations and generations of it, the bodies began breaking down at a quicker pace. So instead of living for 900 years or more in the days of Adam, today we only live upward of around 100 years.
Adam had his 3rd son, Seth, at the age of 130 years old. He lived to be 930 years old. The Bible never says how many children Adam had. One can only imagine he could have had quite a few in the next 800 years after Seth was born. For the fun of it, lets pretend that only 500 years of it were for procreating. Even giving Eve a three year break between each child, that is 166 kids. Consider nearly half were females who after even 14 or 15 years old could start procreating themselves. Likely sooner.
I put this into Excel. Being very conservative I feel, I went with Eve having a girl every 6 years. Each girl after she was 15 years old, she would start having a girl every 6 years as well. Each one of their kids would have girls every 6 years and so on.... By the time Adam was only 250 years old, there would be 8,385 girls in the world. That is in only 120 years of procreation. That's with having a child only once every three years and half the children being male and half being female. If on average every female had another child every year and a half, that would double the population in that 120 years. Making it 33,540 people and 16,770 of them female. That is only in 120 years. As years went by, there would be more and more having children at the same time.
To give you another way of looking at it, consider this old addition trick. If I offered you a million dollars right now, or 1 penny doubled every day for 30 days, what would you take? If you are wise, you take the pennies. If I gave you one penny today, two tomorrow, four more the next day and 8 the next and so on... in 30 days you would have a total of $5,368,709.12! Add one more day on that and it doubles again and you have $10,737,418.24! You see, at first it doesn't seem like much, but as it grows larger and continues to double, it just suddenly balloons to enormous amounts. Now picture the population doing a similar thing.
At first you would only have a few girls giving birth to girls every few years. As time goes on however, you soon have hundreds of girls giving birth to girls every few years.
The Bible never says how old Cain is when he takes a wife. Likely the cattle they had to keep to supply meat and such would have been eating up the grass so only so many people could live in one area. So they would have had to have begun spreading out. Some families would travel a distance to find good fertilization for their cattle as well as soil for their farms. If Cain was over 100 years old when he took a wife, there was very likely 20,000 to 30,000 people already and many of them adult females for him to take one as a wife.
Now obvious there will be many who will doubt this saying people just don't live that long and they don't believe Adam was 930 years old when he died. That isn't even believable.
Let me ask you, have you ever considered why we die at such an early age? No its not all of the preservatives and other chemicals we take in today. I am sure those don't help but that's not the difference from the days of Adam.
Adam and Eve were created with perfect bodies. Not necessarily in shape but I mean biologically. Their bodies were meant to live forever. When they sinned, as they say, the wages of sin is death. Their bodies began to slowly break down just like ours do today, only at a much slower pace. About one tenth the speed ours breaks down. But in order for them to populate the earth, they needed to breed with relatives. Incest at this time was not considered bad. But the problem with inner breeding is that it causes a breakdown of molecular structures.
Consider the Bull Dogs we have now. They once were taller dogs with strong builds more in the lines of the boxers we have today. Their faces were not crushed in looking. Because of inbreeding to keep them purebreds, they slowly had changes to their structure. The short hefty dogs with crooked legs and a punched in face we see today for a Bull Dog? That is just the results of inbreeding. The same thing happens with people.
Early on, people inbred to populate the earth. The bodies could handle the slight breakdowns without big results for a long time. There came a time when the bodies had too many faults with it however and that is when God laid down the rules against incest. Because He knew our bodies could not continue down that path without major problems. One of the greatest effects of all the inbreeding early on however was that over generations and generations of it, the bodies began breaking down at a quicker pace. So instead of living for 900 years or more in the days of Adam, today we only live upward of around 100 years.