Polygamy and Other Relationships

There are all sorts of firsts in the book of Genesis. Not just the creation of things and life, but firsts of behaviors and motivations and relationships. There was no such thing as husband before God gave Eve to Adam, and no such thing as wife. There was no such thing as father or mother until they bore their first children, and second generation human beings were the first to understand what it means to be a daughter or son, brother or sister. These are the relationships that define how human beings behave with one another. Eventually as the population sprawled into distant relatives, the relationship of a friend received its meaning.

I'm interested by the relationship of husband and wife. Now, God created Eve specifically for Adam; her form, her heart, her mind, the passions of her spirit and the strengths and weaknesses of her character, all designed to compliment those of Adam. They were meant to unite as one by their design and there was little ambiguity in their relationship to one another - as simple as a nut and bolt.

But as they multiplied and their generations of offspring spread throughout the earth, I wonder how the process of choosing a mate evolved. I wonder if, or for how long, multiple "wives" or partners was the acceptable practice. I also wonder if this was by God's design for a time. Moses refers to Eve as Adam's wife (Gen, 2:25) and the next reference to a "wife" is Cain's (Gen. 4:17). After the introduction of Eve, it is assumed that by man's nature and the desire of his heart he will "leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and become one flesh" (Gen. 2:24). If a man is to find a wife and become one flesh with her, it makes sense that the role of "wife" is referred to only in the singular, for how can a man become one with more than one?

But by the seventh generation of human beings, "Lamech married two women, Adah and Zillah" (Gen. 4:19) - the first occurrence of polygamy in scripture. I thought for a moment that maybe he had two wives because the first had died at some point, but in verse 23 he speaks to both at once.

In the very next chapter we learn that Lamech is the father of Noah - only one generation previous to the flood. Now, we know the flood was God's reaction to man's thorough wickedness and sin, so we shouldn't assume that the people of Lamech's generation were still close to their creator. The were obviously living lives of disobedience and distance from Him. According to Noah's genealogy, Lamech died only five years before the flood. I think he's very likely to be among those who brought pain to God's heart at the time Noah was instructed to begin building the ark.

I wonder, was Lamech's polygamy a contributing factor to God's displeasure with man? And not just Lamech's, but that of any other man on the earth who had taken multiple wives. Isn't polygamy contrary to God's design? I've got some reading to do yet, but I think I'll wrestle with this throughout scripture. I think of David; the man after God's own heart, who had concubines and I-don't-know-how-many wives. How can that be? I also think of one of Paul's letters in the new testament, which mentions that any leader in the church should have but one wife. Does that infer polygamy was a generally acceptable practice among the Jews who had recently been converted?

This will have to be a point I revisit.

Cain's Plight

Adam and Eve gave birth to Cain and Abel. Later they had a son named Seth, but the story of strife between these two brothers is the famous first example of murder among mankind, and they're really the only two people I think of as second generation human beings. I'm forced to realize that this is far from the truth - that there were likely hundreds of offspring from Adam and Eve in this second generation - when I get to verse 14 of chapter 4.

This is after Cain has killed Abel and God has banished him to wander the earth, which will also no longer produce fruit for him as punishment for his crime. This seems a pretty fitting, if not lenient, punishment for inventing murder. Of course, today we're all-too familiar with homicide and it's not a stretch to understand the implications of exile; separation from home, family, and familiarity. But this was more severe still, because cultivating the soil to bear fruit was Cain's livelihood. It was his work, his profession, his method of providing for his family, and the trade he learned from his father, Adam. This was among the very first learned behaviors between one of the very first father/son relationships. In only two generations of human existence there's hardly such a thing as heritage, but this was about as close as it gets. Fittingly, Cain has been deprived of it.

Anyway, at verse 14 Cain petitions God on his own behalf, claiming that this punishment to wander the earth would cause "whoever finds" him to kill him. God responds by putting a mark on him and announcing that whoever might kill Cain would be avenged seven times over. Needless to say we don't hear anything about Cain being harassed after that. But it was here that I realized Cain had other people to worry about on the earth.

At the time of Cain's sentencing, humanity consisted of much more than the happy little four-person nucleus of Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel as I had always pictured. Adam lived a total of 930 years and he was 130 when Eve gave birth to their only other named son in the Bible, Seth - after Abel's murder (Gen. 4:25, 5:3). So Adam could have been 129 or 130 years old already at the time Cain's exile, meaning that it's physically possible for the first of his offspring to have been 128 or 129 years old as well. If Eve never delivered twins or multiples and had about one child per year until this time (remember, it was their job to multiply and populate the earth), then there could have been up to 127 other second-generation humans with Cain and Abel. Assuming the age of 14 before any of these offspring were fertile themselves, there could have been as many as 3348 third-generation human beings at this time (following the logic of a 50% female population and a reproduction rate of one child per year after age 14). These women could have turned out a total of 3477 first, second, and third generation humans for Cain to be concerned with at the time of his exile. Not to mention any fourth, fifth, or sixth generations in even larger populations, the oldest of which could have been 87 years old already. This means roughly tens of thousands of people at risk of judging or killing Cain as a wanderer on the earth.

All this to say that I was originally confused about why Cain was concerned for his safety, but there was obviously more happening on the earth than I originally pictured. Understanding this moderate estimate of reproduction rates and population growth also helps me with the picture of everybody "marrying" or "laying with" people who could not have been farther in blood relation than a first cousin. I guess when the numbers so quickly reach that of a moderately sized rural American county, kissing your sister isn't quite so much like kissing your sister anymore.

I'm still confused by the issue of gene pool diversity, but you've gotta start somewhere, right?