Garren 1970 :
Thank you for attempting to answer a question most people have; the answer is explicit in Genesis when read in full context. First, note that in Hebrew, ‘Adam’ (אָדָם) and ‘man’ are the same word, meaning ‘mankind’ or ‘humanity’ collectively. In Genesis 1:27, God creates Adam as a species: “male and female created He them,” and in verse 28 He instructs this species to “be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth,” confirming a broad population from the start. Genesis 2 then zooms in on two specific individuals (Adam and Eve) for a theological purpose; like a movie that starts with an event and then writes on the screen “Two years earlier…” before showing the events leading up to it, the text first gives the general creation (Genesis 1) and then flashes back to detail the Garden narrative for our learning. Thus Cain’s wife probably came from the people created in Genesis 1:27, or from Adam and Eve’s later children mentioned in Genesis 5:4 (“he had sons and daughters”); scripture simply doesn’t name all offspring, only those significant for the messianic line and moral lessons. The extra-biblical Book of Jubilees (4:1, 4:9) explicitly names Cain’s wife as his sister ‘Awan (אָוֶן), yet both the Bible and Jubilees consistently indicate that Adam and Eve as individuals were not the only created mankind; rather, they were specific persons within the already-existing human species, which is why Cain could find a wife without contradiction.
2026-05-31 14:01:02