The marriage of cousins in the Bible

In the beginning of human creation, Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel, Cain murdered Abel. This left only Cain to propagate the human race. Genesis 4:16-17 states that Cain traveled east of Eden to the land of Nod. There, he married a wife who conceived and bore a son. So where did Cain’s wife come from?

At the historic Scopes trial in Tennessee in 1925, Clarence Darrow, the ACLU lawyer, asked William Jennings Bryan, the same question. The answer may lie in Genesis 5:4, which reveals that Adam “had other sons and daughters.” First century Jewish historian Josephus confirmed this when he wrote that Adam had “thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters.” Cain’s wife could have been his sister. Since all humans descended from Adam, the logical conclusion is that we all are distant products of incest.

It is undeniable that God allowed “incest” at the time of human creation. Since Adam and Eve were the first two humans on earth, their sons and daughters had no choice but to marry and reproduce with their siblings and close relatives. Subsequent generations had to marry their cousins–just as the grandchildren of Noah had to intermarry with their cousins. One reason that incest is so strongly discouraged today is that reproduction between closely related individuals poses a much higher risk of causing genetic abnormalities.

Excluding Cain’s wife, the best-known Biblical examples of incest were: Abraham marrying his half-sister Sarah (Genesis 20:12), Lot being seduced by his daughters (Genesis 19), Moses’ father, Amram, married his aunt, Jochebed (Exodus 6:20), and David’s son, Amnon’s, rape of his half-sister, Tamar (2 Samuel 13).

When the first humans were created, incest was not prohibited. Incest came into focus during the time of Moses when the Mosaic Law was instituted. The first prohibitions against incest came with the Mosaic Law. These laws are detailed in Leviticus, chapters 18 and 20. Among the disapprovals were: a man could not have sexual relations with his mother, sister, wife’s sister, half-sister, step-mother, mother-in-law, aunt, stepdaughter, daughter-in-law, granddaughter, or step-granddaughter.

Additionally, Paul wrote about immorality in the first century church at Corinth. In I Corinthians 5, Paul writes: “There is sexual immorality among you so terrible that not even the heathen would be guilty of it. I am told that a man is sleeping with his stepmother… You should not associate yourself with a person who is immoral or greedy or worships idols or is a slanderer or a drunkard, or a thief. Don’t sit down to eat with such a person.”

To conclude, genetic research has demonstrated that cousins should not marry. History tells is that Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin married their first cousins. This is because a high likelihood exists that both cousins may carry the same defective genes. Let’s say it’s the cystic fibrosis gene or any other major health issue. When first cousins marry, this defective gene can be transferred to their child. This likelihood sharply diminishes for the intermarriage of third cousins and especially so for fourth cousins. God foreknew all these things when He created mankind. Thus came the prohibitions in the bible against incest, which carries a far greater risk than cousins marrying.

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