Who Was the Wife of Cain?
A closer look at one of the most enigmatic women in Genesis
This illustration shows Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, where God gave them the command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Photo: From Charles Foster, The Story of the Bible (1897).
While there are many examples of strong and inspiring men and women in Genesis, the book is also packed with stories of dysfunctional families, which is evidenced from the very beginning with the first family—Adam, Eve and their two children, Cain and Abel. In no short amount of time—just 16 verses after announcing the birth of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4—Cain has murdered his younger brother and is consequently exiled from the land. In theory, this would have dropped the world’s population from four down to three. The narrative continues in Genesis 4 with Cain settling in the land of Nod and having children with his wife. Who did Cain marry? Where did she come from? Are there other people outside of Eden? In the November/December 2013 issue of BAR, Mary Joan Winn Leith addresses these questions and explores the identity of the wife of Cain in “Who Did Cain Marry?”
Given that the wife of Cain is only mentioned once in the Old Testament, she would not be counted among the famous women in Genesis. Nevertheless, her identity is still worth investigating. Who did Cain marry? Mary Joan Winn Leith first explores the traditional Jewish and Christian answers that contend that the wife of Cain was another daughter of Adam and Eve. According to this reasoning, Cain would have married his sister—one of Abel’s twin sisters no less, according to the Genesis Rabbah.
FREE ebook: Exploring Genesis: The Bible’s Ancient Traditions in Context Mesopotamian creation myths, Joseph’s relationship with Egyptian temple practices and 3 tales of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham.
Mary Joan Winn Leith explores the identity of the wife of Cain.
A different answer emerges when Leith turns from the traditional responses about the wife of Cain and delves into modern scholarship. Looking at recent work done by sociologists and anthropologists, she notes that when forming a group identity, we tend to define ourselves by how we differ from other groups. In the ancient Near East, sometimes those outside of a particular group or society were considered less “human” by those inside of the group. An important factor that contributes to this mindset is geography. People in the ancient Near East typically stayed close to home, which affected their perception of the world. Surely they knew that other groups of people—potential enemies or allies—existed far away, but if they never came into contact with these groups, what did they matter?
Mary Joan Winn Leith suggests that while the Israelite storyteller knew that other men and women in Genesis existed outside of Eden, they did not matter to him or factor into his account. He was concerned with Adam and Eve and their progeny—not those outside of this group.
Who did Cain marry? There are many answers. For Leith’s explanation of the identity of the wife of Cain—one of the often-overlooked women in Genesis—read her full Biblical Views column “Who Did Cain Marry?”
BAS Library Members: Read the full Biblical Views column “Who Did Cain Marry?” by Mary Joan Winn Leith in the November/December 2013 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.
This Bible History Daily feature was originally published in 2013.
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Where did Cain get his wife if there was just one family?
Gen. 3:20: “Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she had to become the mother of everyone living.” (So all humans were to be the offspring of Adam and Eve.)
Gen. 5:3, 4: “Adam lived on for a hundred and thirty years. Then he became father to a son in his likeness, in his image, and called his name Seth. And the days of Adam after his fathering Seth came to be eight hundred years. Meanwhile he became father to sons and daughters.” (One of Adam’s sons was Cain, and one of Adam’s daughters must have become Cain’s wife. At that time in human history when humans still had outstanding physical health and vitality, as indicated by the length of their lives, the likelihood of passing on defects as a result of marrying a close relative was not great. After some 2,500 years of human history, however, when mankind’s physical condition had greatly deteriorated, Jehovah gave to Israel laws forbidding incest.)
Gen. 4:16, 17: “Cain went away from the face of Jehovah and took up residence in the land of Fugitiveness [or, Nod] to the east of Eden. Afterward Cain had intercourse with his wife [“knew his wife,” that is, intimately so, KJ, RS; “lay with his wife,” NE] and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch.” (Notice that Cain did not first meet his wife in the land to which he fled, as if she were from another family. Rather, it was there that he had sexual relations with her to produce a son.)
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1101989257?q=Cain&p=par
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/s/r1/lp-e?q=Cain&p=par
People make great jumps from assumption to conclusion, perhaps we can start with the grammar in the question. What is being asked in, “Who did Cain marry”? That is a convoluted question if you follow the grammar. If I get what you are after the question you are actually asking is,” Whom did Cain marry?”
Sounds like a lot of assumptions in her article which denigrate the Biblical record into a biased account of one of, in the author’s eyes, just many people on the earth. This article implies, perhaps states, that Adam and Eve were not the first or only people created by a special act of God. The assumption is that the genealogical record of the births of Cain and Abel is complete and that there were no other children born at that time. However, it appears that Ms. Leith’s article dovetails nicely with current evolutionary ideology.
In Genesis 1:24, God orders the earth (in Hebrew Aretz) to produce “living creatures of all kind” and with a careful reading we can understand that it includes also human being. These are the people that Cain was afraid to meet, after having killed Abel and as a consequence of his act.
How could we imagine that animals could punish Cain? (Gen. 4:14) Only human being are capable of inflicting a punishment! Then God creates Adam from as totally different raw materiale, from earth (in Hebrew adama) which is the soil of Gan Eden. Therefore it is right to say that God was interested in Adam made in His own image with a different material. Whomever Cain marries becomes much less important
“Whom did Cain marry” that is not the important part of this question. The important part is that BAS seems to be quite liberal in what they print. If this is a biblical question then use biblical answers. There is no where in the bible that says there were other groups of people on earth in the beginning with Adam and Eve, but it was common to marry brother and sister before and after the flood. If you would study the bible and not some sci fi novel then you would understand that for times sake you can’t fit every detail of creation into the bible. But the writer of the bible did assume that we could figure out that there were more children born to Adam and Eve, that is why when the lifespan verse of the Christ lineage male’s always say (and they begat son’s and daughters; and they died). So the real problem is that too few people want to read the bible and believe it literally.
I hope that BAS will stop printing science fiction and start using people that read and believe the bible, not obscure theologians.
I can’t get worked up over this question. When I’m in Heaven I’ll know the answer to all the things I don’t know here. I can wait. Revelation 22:20 Even so Lord Jesus, come quickly.
It’s a real shame that the writer chose to ignore several items in the Bible.
1. Gen 2:20 No suitable helper was found
2. The Fall
3. Gen 3:20 Adam named his wife Eve because she would be the mother of all who live
4. The worldwide flood
1. God brought all creatures to Adam to name, but none of them were a suitable helper for him, so God created the first woman.
2. The fall is important in this argument because if death and suffering existed before Adam’s sin, then why did Christ have to come and die? All descendants not of Adam’s line would not have been eligible for forgiveness, but they would have still been subject to the condemnation of creation. They would not have been blood relatives.
3. The Bible is pretty explicit in saying that Eve is the mother of all humanity. Modern mitochondrial eve experiments confirm the timeframe of the biblical Eve.
4. The worldwide flood destroyed everyone as confirmed in 2 Peter 2 and 3, so comparing the pre-flood civilizations to modern near east cultures that ignore distant settlements is in either disingenuous or ignorant.
It is important that Cain married a sister for the biblical narrative to make sense.
Cain married his wife. That was the key relationship between them, not their kinship. And why not—only some of us are married, but we’re all related.
This is an obvious question to anyone who looks at the Bible with non-fundamentalist open eyes. Any inquisitive child asks the same question. Where did all these people in Nod come from if Adam and Eve are the original people created? The answer is however very simple. Just as the editor/compilers of the Bible had no problem weaving two separate creation stories together they had many other traditions and legends to work with, They wove a story explaining the origin of homicide into the narrative of creation myth, to flood/destruction myth, to renewal and the story of Abraham and his descendents, the Israelites, whose destiny is of course is the primary purpose for the narrative being composed.
One should also understand that what we see as written scripture to be read and studied was in ancient times often oral traditions that were recited to the main population who were most often illiterate in early ancient times. These oral traditions were blended with well know stories and written material borrowed from the region’s dominant Mesopotamian culture. Like today’s Torah service in a traditional Jewish Shabbat service the text was read aloud at an auience. The audience understood the cultural cues and were unconcerned about narrative contradictions and inconsistencies as they had an entirely different way of thinking than us moderns do. Only when later generations inherited these material did they think that they need the glitches to be explained or interpreted.
One of the factors, in addition to the total disregard for the Biblical narrative as a whole, that appears to have been omitted is the time scale. My understanding is that, since Adam and Eve had “other sons and daughters” (Gen.5:3) after their first three sons. Cain ‘married’ his own (younger) sister!
Of course, there was no formal marriage ceremony; there was no law against ‘incest’; the gene pool was still so pure that there was no requirement for any incest regulation.
As others of Adam’s and Eve’s siblings would have, similarly, ‘married’, the population would undoubtedly have expanded in exponential terms. It was these near relatives of whom Cain was afraid. After all, why, at such an early stage in the history of mankind, would some alleged tribe, with no direct connection, have the slightest interest in the murder of an unknown person?! The name “Nod” was not necessarily used by Cain and his contemporaries, but may simply have been the name of the area as known to the original readers of ha Torah.
As someone else has commented, it would be good if this site stuck to its title. There is no problem with bringing in a sceptical argument – but to throw such theologically liberal material at us as the ‘main diet’ is not going to encourage me to remain with the site!