Ask Your Preacher - Archives
“Family Matters”
Categories: GRAB BAG, OLD TESTAMENTWho did Adam and Eve's children marry?
Sincerely,
My Family’s Not That Close
Dear My Family’s Not That Close,
They married each other. Adam and Eve were the only people God created on day six (Gen 1:27, Gen 2:25). Adam and Eve were given the command to “go forth and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen 1:28). Since there was only the two of them in the beginning, their children had to marry each other. Of course, this makes us think about incest and the problems with marrying people that you are too closely related to, but those were not applicable to the people during the initial years after creation.
Incest is only wrong because God says it is wrong, and He never condemned the practice until well after the Flood (Lev 18:6-18). It was perfectly appropriate (and necessary!) for people to marry their close relations during early Earth history. It was also perfectly safe because there was no worry about the genetic problems that we face today. Today, when people marry someone that is too closely related to themselves, there is a risk of emphasizing genetic defects in the next generation – such as the infamous cases of hemophilia found amongst European royalty. This wouldn’t have been a problem for the earliest generations of mankind. In the beginning, Adam and Eve were perfect and without any genetic flaws whatsoever (Gen 1:31). Therefore, there was no risk for them or for the generations that closely followed them of spreading a genetic flaw. So yes, as strange as it may seem, Adam and Eve’s children married each other.
