[HOTL's Got Questions] Who is Cain's Wife?

One of the most common questions skeptics ask about the Bible — and one that Christians sometimes struggle to answer. In this episode, we dig into Genesis to tackle the question head-on: If Adam and Eve were the first people, who exactly did Cain marry?

We explore what Scripture actually says, the leading theories among Biblical scholars, the genetics behind why God later prohibited close-relative marriage in Leviticus, and why this question isn't as scandalous as it sounds when you understand the full context of creation — and even Noah's ark.

Whether you're a longtime believer or just curious about the Bible, this is an honest, thoughtful conversation about a tough question of faith.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hello and welcome back to the Hoddcast where we answer questions about faith, faith issues, faith questions about the Bible. And so today we have uh interesting question. Who was Cain's wife? Now, Matt, why don't you tell us who Cain is in the Bible?

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Well, he was one of the children of Adam and Eve, and it was a very violent time because he killed 25% of the population at the moment. As far as we know. As far as we know more, we don't really know. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

So he killed his brother basically over jealousy, because God uh believe God said that Abel's gift was better than Cain's gift. His offering. His offering. You know, Abel gave a better offering of his best, where Cain just gave some excess. And so God said the best giving your best is a better offering than giving just your excess. And so Cain got really mad at Abel and killed him. That was kind of the thing. He's a brother, he killed him. So that is the kind of the issue. And then so then you've got Adam and Eve and Cain, and then Cain actually gets married and has family and offspring. And so the question a lot of people want to know is like if it was just Adam and Eve and Cain, who was Cain's wife? Thoughts.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

So I can tell you what because at this point it's theories, really.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

So it's important to say that we're based on biblical understanding, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Right. So because they were able to eat from the tree of life up until the point where they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we have no idea how long they were actually in the garden because they could have been in there for however long, it could have been an extended period of time. Because of that, we have no idea how many kids they had. One of my favorite theories says this whenever Eve is told after she has sinned that now bringing forth a child in childbirth is going to cause pain. If she had never had children up to that point, then why is that a punishment? How would she have known what the difference was? How would she have had any idea that there would have been a difference between pain in childbirth versus no pain in childbirth? So because that exists back whenever they first sinned, that raises the question of how that played out and what happened from there.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Right. So give you some context. It says in Genesis 4, 1 through 2, and Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she was conceived and bore Cain, saying, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord. And again she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep and a keeper of uh and Cain a worker of the ground. And we know Cain goes on to kill Abel. And then in Genesis 4, 17, it says Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the city after the name of his son Enoch. So we know there's Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and then Cain basically marries a woman. She has what he has a wife. And then later in Genesis 5.14 or 5.4, it says the days of Adam after he followed Seth were 800 years and he had other sons and daughters. So what we know is we had Adam, we had Cain and Abel, and then we had Seth. Seth is the line of which the faithfulness of the followers of the Lord comes from. And because Abel's gone and Cain, you know, is a bad line. So when it comes down to it, most scholars believe that Cain's wife is a relative, a sister, right? Of some degree. Um, and we know what that means. We mean we know that means Cain married his wife, that in our modern world is incest, but we have to also understand this is the creation of the world. God has to populate people. There's two people on the planet, and so there's only one way to populate the people with that is that there's going to be children and offspring, and those children are going to have children. And eventually, in Exodus, some hundreds of years later, uh maybe a thousand years later, there goes to be the Ten Commandments, or we see in Exodus 20, I think it's Exodus 2013, there becomes a law about murder. There's also in Leviticus, around the same time, we get the law that forbids marrying sisters. Now, this is many, many generations after Cain and Abel. So the ban of marrying your sister doesn't actually come until Leviticus 18, 18. And so people will try to trip Christians up and say, well, you know, Cain may have married a sister, and you know, and then that the Bible forbids that, but the it that forbidding didn't come till later, till after the earth was already populated, in a way which then um we move forward. And so that that kind of ban comes from the time of Moses and the Levites. And so that's that's kind of the framework. So to me, although our earth now it's weird, it's been a regular thing of the currents over history that most emperors and kings would marry someone who was related to them, a sister or a very, very close relative, because they would keep it in the bloodline, the the monarchy. So we've seen that replicated throughout history in different ways, especially with royal lineages and things. So when we come to it, what do you guys think about that? What do you think, Ryan? Did you hear that?

SPEAKER_00 5:09

I mean, I don't I'm not sure. I mean, what do I think about it? I mean, it's you know, I mean, I don't know. People had babies with their brother, brothers and sisters had babies before, and then now it's not allowed anymore. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Maybe that's just my simple mind, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

A lot of the reason why it's disallowed is because the close genetic connection, the relation, it makes genetic mutations which create disease and issues. And so I tend to think my theory is that Adam and Eve would have perfect DNA. And so when there started to be the breeding of their children, that begins to create problems with perfect DNA being some of the the DNA from each begin to start mutating. And over time, you need those mutations will become more common, and that's that's why you need to be farther and further away from um each bloodline. That that's my my way that I comprehend why it was the way God used that to populate the globe and then disallowed it when that became problematic for um child rearing, because then you would have all these medical problems that they wouldn't be able to care for in the ancient world and still yet difficult to care for in today's world.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Well, it also brings up the question, too, of you can look at Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, but you also need to go just after Noah, because their kids would have likely been, they would have been cousins, and they would have also been pairing off with one another in order to repopulate the earth as well. Right. So that's another example of where that comes into play even back in those days, was trying to figure out how that would play out genetically. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Yeah, Genesis 9, 18 to 19. The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Jepheth. Ham was the father of Canaan, these three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed. So it wasn't just Cain and his wife, which may have been a sister, it's also there was a limited number of people in the ark, eight people, and those eight people from which dispersed the entire globe. So there would have been more dispersion genetically because of um, but the but there would still been less. And so we see that that's even before the Exodus. So those things are all happening as God is populating his earth, and then there becomes a time where God says no more, and that becomes through Leviticus and the Levites in the time of Moses and Aaron, and that is enough. Like God says done, that is no longer way that you can move forward. I tend to look at the science side of it and say, yeah, when we look at the reason why you can't do that, because polydactylism and all these things are now, you know, if you we see in close-knit communities like the Amish, who have a lot of kind of um mixing, I we I want to say in inbreeding, but like there's just a lot of close genetic connection between people groups, as that's a kind of a tight-knit community. We see the danger of that in the real world, and we the that would have been somewhat probably the similar in the ancient world. So God says, no more, the earth is populated, move forward and you know, with people who are not related to you. So um, I don't necessarily find a problem with it because I think in every every model of of history, whether you you agree with Christian history, whether you agree with evolution, there has to be in any of those models, there has to be um incestual inbreeding to populate the globe from a very small group of people. So, like whether we like it or not, that's just the way all the models work. We see the same thing in the model of the Bible from Adam and Eve in the garden, and just I think we know that God's plan is bigger than that, and we also know the risk and danger of the health situations now, which I don't think would have been as prevalent when God gives people very near perfect DNA in the garden. So I think that problem is exacerbated now by um countless generations between now and then. But any other thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 8:51

Not really. I mean, it's there's so many things that you can look at in scripture and say, Well, I don't agree with how that played out then. Well, that's fine, but you're also looking at it through a 2026 lens backed through history as well. There are cultural differences, there are, you know, genetic differences, like there are so many things that as you're looking all the way back, even with just the DNA or the fact that there were environmental factors that didn't play a role at the time either. So there's there's all sorts of different pieces and connections to this that all play together that while we can look at it now and say, well, that's completely messed up, what were the other options? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

I mean the other options are aliens, but like that's that is a theory that's out there. They're aliens and they came in from another planet. Yeah. Um, maybe, but uh probably not. So um real realistically, I think the description of what a lot of scholars believe is the description. I think you just have to understand that's how it works, and we move forward, and we move forward knowing that God has a bigger plan for us, and that's why he gave us his word to tell us how to live in this world post creation, post-flood in the post-the Old Testament. So yeah, we hope this is helpful. Um we'll catch you in the next episode of Hoddle's God Questions.