Cain’s Wife Revisited!

I thought you might enjoy hearing this … It happened just this past Sunday at our youth group meeting (9^th–12^th grades). We hadn’t done any work with the kids on Genesis except Noah’s Ark. We were playing a version of tic-tac-toe (hollywood squares style).

Two groups of students were answering questions put by a moderator. There were 10 students involved. As a question was placed to one group. The other group was given the scripture which supports the correct answer.

The question was: Where did Cain get his wife? The scripture was: Genesis 5:4.

At first both groups were very quiet for some time. Suddenly, the group reading the scripture verse all as one cried out, ‘Oooew, that’s sick!’ The other group was still trying to come up with an answer when one of the boys leaned over and said to the rest, ‘Adam and Eve had more kids, right?’ ‘Oooew! That is sick!’, rose from the group answering the question.

The amazing thing is they guessed the right answer on their own. No prompting. No help. I wish everyone could have been there. My heart nearly burst when I heard that young boy ask that simple question.

Keep the Faith,
Joe Ritter

Ed. note: It’s important to note that the emotions are often an unreliable guide, and this includes the emotional outburst of the kids: ‘Oooew! That is sick!’ As we have pointed out, there was nothing ‘sick’ about it, because laws against brother-sister intermarriage were not introduced until the time of Moses. Before then, there were few genetic defects (mutations) that today make it inadvisable for close relatives to marry. For example, Abraham was able, both biologically and morally, to marry his half-sister Sarah (and their descendants are the Jewish/Hebrew people — see Y-chromosomes confirm Genesis teaching about Abraham), which would not be the case today.

For more explanation about Cain’s wife, marriage and mutations, please see our answer, extracted from the Revised & Expanded Answers Book.

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