Genesis 4:17: Cain’s wife. Where
did Cain’s wife come from if there were no other people around? The Young-Earth
Creationist view says that he married his sister, and biblical exhortations
such as Leviticus 18:9 forbidding incest did not apply to the start of the
human race. But a more reasonable explanation is that the Bible is saying Cain
married a woman outside of Adam’s life, one living among a human population
already established in southern Mesopotamian before Adam and Eve lived.
Genesis 4:17: Cain builds a city. Whereas
villages contain tens to hundreds of people, cities need a population of
thousands. Where did all these people come from in order for Cain to have built
a city? The Young-Earth Creationist view is that there was an exponential population
explosion at this time because Genesis 5:4 says that Adam begot other sons and
daughters over his lifespan of hundreds of years. The archaeological data
substantiates that a number of cities arose in southern Mesopotamia around 3400
B.C. in the Uruk Period, or approximately when Cain lived and supposedly
established the first city . . . This implies that Cain did not establish the only
city in this region; that is, there were other populations living in
southern Mesopotamia who were also congregating into cities at this time.
Genesis 4:14: Who will slay Cain? If
there was no one else around, why was Cain worried that someone might slay him?
Was he worried that someone might slay him? Was he worried that one of Abel’s
sons (if he had any sons before he was murdered) or one of his brothers would
kill him? Or was he worried that someone outside of his family line would kill
him? As mentioned earlier in this chapter, hunter-gather nomad tribes are known
from archaeological remains to have inhabited the Arabian Peninsula-Persian Gulf
area long before the time that Adam and Eve lived (as early as around
100,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens first migrated out of Africa).
Genesis 3:24: The cherubim guards. Why
were the cherubim commanded to guard the way to the tree of life[?] . . . Guard
it from whom? From other people besides Adam and Eve who would try to get into the
garden to eat o the tree of life in order to live forever (Gen. 3:22)?
Genesis 4:16: The land of Nod. Throughout
the Bible phrases like the “land of Canaan” or “land of Egypt” refer to an area
populated by these particular people. Similarly, could the “land of Nod” have
been populated by the “Nodites” who lived east of Eden? In Hebrew, “nod” means “vagrancy”
or “wandering,” and so another suitable translation of Genesis 4:14 would be: “
. . . and Cain dwelt in a land of nomads.” Therefore, it is possible that the
people Cain feared would kill him were wandering bands of desert nomads who
lived in tents; that is, other nomadic people besides Jabel’s line, who dwelt
in tents (Gen. 4:20)?
Genesis 6:1-2: The sons of God and the
daughters of men. . . . The term “sons of men” applies to the
human population in general. In Numbers, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Daniel, and
Ecclesiastes the term “sons of men” refers to any people, be they Israelites or
non-Israelites. It also sometimes refers to ungodly men who are against the Lord’s
people; for example, in Psalm 57:4, King David says: “My soul is among lions,
and I lie even among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose
teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword” (KJV). Other
times, it refers to Israelites who are out of favor with the Lord, as in Numbers
23:19: “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man that he
should repent” (KJV).
If this is the proper interpretation of the “sons of God”
and “sons of men,” Then a third option regarding Genesis 6:1-2 is possible
besides the two traditional ones. The phrase “the sons of God” refers to the
chosen line of Adam, while “the daughters of men” could refer to the population
of humans that lived alongside the line of Adam. That would explain why they
took these women as wives, and also why the flood account directly follows in Genesis
6. The unbelieving wives from the non-Adamite population were turning their believing
husbands away from God and toward wickedness and idol worship. Among the
children of these unions were the giants (Nephilim) of Genesis 6:4, who seem to
have survived Noah’s flood, as they reappear in Numbers 13:33—still another reason
for not interpreting Noah’s flood as globally killing off all the people on
planet Earth besides Noah and his family. (Carol Hill, A Worldview Approach to
Science and Scripture [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Academic, 2019], 152-54)
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