Before entering the reading, as I go through a computer transition in the next couple of weeks I may not be posting as frequently. I hope we can all keep up with Scripture reading as we work our way through this Lenten season.
People often ask where all the people came from for these cities which are founded in Genesis 4. I want to make just a few quick observations.
1) We need to assume that here, as everywhere, the Bible is not completely exhaustive in its genealogies. We can assume that Adam and Eve continued having children other than those who are mentioned.
2) Genetic problems are not always immediately caused by family members marrying one another. We need to assume that these earliest people married people who were close relatives, as there were not other people to marry
3) Often when we think of a city we think of a very large number of people. This was not the typical view throughout antiquity. Think of a city as a group of a few married couples and their offspring. As people reach an age when they can marry, considering that people were fruitful as God had ordained, the families and cities grow rapidly.
4) Recall that a woman will typically bear children for about 20-30 years. And recall the kind of life spans people seem to have had near the beginning of Genesis. The life spans were quite long. This may indicate that the childbearing years were likewise quite a bit longer than they are now.
Once there was not such urgency to populate the world, and as the family trees spread, God instructed people not to marry their closest relatives. By the end of Adam and Eve's lifetime there was a fairly wide spread of different generations and a wide variety of people to marry.
Once again we see God active in making provision that people could fulfill his command to populate the world.
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