Is it possible that Cain and his siblings were provided wives and husbands, outside of their own family, who also were created on the sixth day?


Email Received:

Here are some of my points and a question about the sixth creation day:

  1. The creation of human male and female was on the 6th day of creation. They were told to multiply and subdue the Earth, and for their food they could eat of any tree fruit with seed in it. It seems that there were others at the time who were given these commands.
  2. For Adam, no suitable helpmate was found. My thought is that God would not have expected Adam to pick an animal but another female who was created on the 6th day. No other would have been exactly suited for Adam, but Eve would have had the exact same intellect, looks, color, body size (female adjusted of course). Basically, she was a female "clone" of Adam, having come from him.
  3. Eve would become the mother of all the living. This was accomplished through Noah and his sons, not necessarily that all of the human race (except for Adam) came from her. No where have I seen where brother/sister marriage was condoned. Abraham did say of Sarah that they had different mothers but the same father. Maybe he was talking about God as their common Father to prevent telling a straight out lie to the King.
  4. Is it possible that Cain and his siblings were provided wives and husbands, outside of their own family, who also were created on the sixth day? This would seem to explain all the genetic diversity we see in humans.


Ted's Response:

Evidently, you are under the assumption that Adam and Eve were not the only humans created by God on the sixth creation day. Furthermore, it seems that you are thinking that God told all of these people He had created to multiply and subdue the earth, and also that Adam had the option of choosing a mate from these other created females.

If that is what you are saying, I disagree with your foundational premise that any humans other than Adam (and Eve within him) were created on the sixth creation day. As far as a helpmate for Adam, God knew that there would be no animal who could serve in this capacity. He brought all types of animals to Adam so that he could name them and also to show him that none of them resembled him. Then Adam would know that a suitable mate could not be chosen from among the animals. That is was why Eve had to be taken out of Adam to be his mate, since there were no other humans at the time.

God created male (Adam) and female (Eve inside of Adam) in His own image (Genesis 1:27). It is confusing to some why, in Genesis chapter 2, it states that God formed the man (Adam) from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7) and then the woman (Eve) from Adam (2:22). It almost sounds like two separate accounts happening at different times, but that is not the case. Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are complementary, as described in the Genesis 1 vs. Genesis 2 section that I wrote in the early 1990s.

Eve was the mother of all the living (Genesis 3:20) because she was the first woman. All other humans (except for Adam) came from her. It was through the disobedience of Adam and Eve that all of humanity was tainted, requiring all people to need a Savior to obtain eternal life.

The directive not to have sexual relations with siblings or other family members did not come about until God gave Moses those commandments (Leviticus 18:6-18). Thus, Cain and Seth must have had children with their sisters. When Cain went to the land of Nod and lay with his wife, she was not a woman he found there; she accompanied him there and had to have been his sister or other close relative.

Abraham married his half-sister (Genesis 20:11,12), which was permissible because it was before God gave the commandment not to do this anymore. When Abraham noted that he and his wife had the same father, he was not talking about God; he was talking about their biological father. Furthermore, he was not lying when he told Abimelech the king that Sarah was his sister.

One of the main problems today with close male/female relatives having children is that there are numerous defects in the gene pool. If close relatives reproduce together, they are more likely to have genes with the same defects matching up; so deformities can be passed on to their offspring more easily. The further away the relationship between the two parents is, though, the more likely a good gene is to override a defect on a bad gene.

Originally, with Adam and Eve, there were no defects in their genes. Moreover, the defects in the genes of close relatives was not a significant factor for many generations, until God commanded close relatives not to marry in the time of Moses.


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