Question & Answer #3 (Did Cain and Seth marry their sisters?)

Question: So God made Adam and Eve, they had kids, then who did they marry? cause the bible says do not marry brothers or sisters. so where did we all come from?


Thanks for the question. 


The three people who we hear about most after Adam and Eve are Cain, Abel and Seth. Cain kills Abel. So the question we need to ask is who did Cain and Seth marry and was it right for them to marry whoever they married?



Genesis 5:4 says that Adam and Eves had other sons and daughters. The only conclusion we can make is that Cain and Seth married their sisters. The first thing we need to remember is that all humans are related. We are all descendants of Adam so all of us are related to each other in some way (just some relatives are more distant than others). As Genesis says:

Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.(Genesis 3:20)

All of us came from Adam and Eve (Acts 17:26). All of us who get married, marry a relative in one way or another (don't let it freak you out). What the Bible says is wrong is to marry or have sexual relations with a close relative. 

No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the LORD. (Leviticus 18:6)


But this law in Leviticus was given a long time after Cain and Seth lived. Our problems and questions were not the questions Cain and Seth had. We can't interpret Genesis from our situation, we need to try and understand it from the situation of those there. God's law had not been given to them but God's law has been given to Israel and to us (how we should understand God's law is a topic for a whole other post, though you can check out Matthew 5:17 and Galatians 3:10-14 to get started). Maybe this is because there was no genetic issues for them whilst there would be for us. We don't know but what we can know is that incest is not right for us today.