Incest

[Grace2022]

I am reading my way through the Old Testament but finding the many cases of incest really very disturbing. Why on earth was it so prevalent?
We naturally feel horror at the very thought of such relationships between close family, even more distant family. Every culture abhors and bans it, rightly. The greatest taboo.
So why on earth did such significant figures in the Bible do it? They specifically looked for close relations for marriage with their children. I do find it very off putting!

 

[HTacianas]

I am reading my way through the Old Testament but finding the many cases of incest really very disturbing. Why on earth was it so prevalent?
We naturally feel horror at the very thought of such relationships between close family, even more distant family. Every culture abhors and bans it, rightly. The greatest taboo.
So why on earth did such significant figures in the Bible do it? They specifically looked for close relations for marriage with their children. I do find it very off putting!

If you can give us an example of these "close relations" it would be helpful.

 

[createdtoworship]

I am reading my way through the Old Testament but finding the many cases of incest really very disturbing. Why on earth was it so prevalent?
We naturally feel horror at the very thought of such relationships between close family, even more distant family. Every culture abhors and bans it, rightly. The greatest taboo.
So why on earth did such significant figures in the Bible do it? They specifically looked for close relations for marriage with their children. I do find it very off putting!

If you can give us an example of these "close relations" it would be helpful.

this is a bible difficulty, usually skeptics will word it this way...."where did cain get his wife."

the best source I have found on this topic is ken ham....

Who Was Cain’s Wife?

on the right side is a short six minute video that summarizes the article, I recommend that video first.

 

[Sketcher]

I am reading my way through the Old Testament but finding the many cases of incest really very disturbing. Why on earth was it so prevalent?
We naturally feel horror at the very thought of such relationships between close family, even more distant family. Every culture abhors and bans it, rightly. The greatest taboo.
So why on earth did such significant figures in the Bible do it? They specifically looked for close relations for marriage with their children. I do find it very off putting!

There are varying degrees of what we consider incest in Scripture. First cousins wasn't considered incest according to Leviticus 18. Closer relationships were. There appears to have been a transition to this standard from allowing full-on incest between brother and sister for a time in order to populate the world - if there's only one first family, how else are you going to do that?

The reason Abraham sought out a relative for Issac appears to be a matter of values. He didn't think the Canaanite women, with their values, were a right match for Issac. A strong theme in the OT is to not marry pagan foreigners, because the pagan foreigners will corrupt your family with pagan values. Rahab and Ruth are exceptions to this because they feared the God of Israel, and as such, they wouldn't be corrupting influences. In that region, the values of some of these pagan religions not only included the worship of false gods, but orgies and even child sacrifice as part of the worship of some of these false gods.

 

[coffee4u]

I am reading my way through the Old Testament but finding the many cases of incest really very disturbing. Why on earth was it so prevalent?
We naturally feel horror at the very thought of such relationships between close family, even more distant family. Every culture abhors and bans it, rightly. The greatest taboo.
So why on earth did such significant figures in the Bible do it? They specifically looked for close relations for marriage with their children. I do find it very off putting!

It only became incest when God handed down the law in the time of Moses. Before this, there was no law and I also believe no feeling of wrongness. God determines what is right and wrong so since he did not find it wrong I also believe that inner feeling of repugnance we have towards it also did not came into being until then. This meant marriage not other types of sexual behavior that was frowned upon.

Where did Cain get his wife? This is a question because people want there to be some other people, but there was not.

1 Corinthians:15-22
For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
If we came from some other person or group we would not be included. We all sin and we all need Christ because we all come from Adam.

Genesis:3-20
Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
Not some or a group, but all.

Cain's wife was his sister as were the other couples.
They lived a long time and would have all had many children, so very quickly there was no need for close family connections.

Abraham was married to his half-sister Sarah and God did not frown upon this but made sure they had a child.
Genesis: 20-12
Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father though not of my mother; and she became my wife.

17 Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” 18 And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!”
19 Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.

Leviticus 18:8-18 God gives them a long list of who they should not have relations with. Listing 9 family members.

 

[Grace2022]

If you can give us an example of these "close relations" it would be helpful.

Hi
Jacob marrying sisters Leah and Rachel. Both daughters of his mother's brother.
I mean why travel far to track down your close blood relatives to marry? There must be a good reason that is not yet apparent to me.

 

[HTacianas]

Hi
Jacob marrying sisters Leah and Rachel. Both daughters of his mother's brother.
I mean why travel far to track down your close blood relatives to marry? There must be a good reason that is not yet apparent to me.

That would make them his cousins. Cousin marriage is not incest. In nearly all parts of the world cousin marriage is common.

 

[Grace2022]

That would make them his cousins. Cousin marriage is not incest. In nearly all parts of the world cousin marriage is common.

Ok. But oh yuk! Is it not naturally repulsive? Does not nature demand very different genes for healthy strong offspring? Maybe it's just me but it is just a no no, anyone even remotely connected by blood.

Was Abraham married to Sarah his half sister?

What about Lot and his daughters? Wow!

 

[coffee4u]

Ok. But oh yuk! Is it not naturally repulsive? Does not nature demand very different genes for healthy strong offspring? Maybe it's just me but it is just a no no, anyone even remotely connected by blood.

Was Abraham married to Sarah his half sister?

What about Lot and his daughters? Wow!

Did you read my reply? Also, cousins still marry across many countries today. It is actually legal here in Australia to marry your first cousin. It's naturally repulsive to you because of your culture. That goes both ways you know. I can think of a number of cultural practices from other countries, including America that I find repulsive.

Lot and his daughter- No, God never condoned that. That was sin. Only where marriage was allowed was there blessing. At no point could you marry your daughter. God sanctioned the marriage of Abraham and Sarah and at that time it was not incest as that was before the law was given to Moses.

When God made Adam and Eve they were not only as perfect genetically as two people could be but held all of mankind's various genetic looks and variety. By the time of Moses genetic mistakes may have been starting, but not then. That feeling of being repulsed by parent-child was given by God, but widened to include more when the law was given.

 

[createdtoworship]

It only became incest when God handed down the law in the time of Moses. Before this, there was no law and I also believe no feeling of wrongness. God determines what is right and wrong so since he did not find it wrong I also believe that inner feeling of repugnance we have towards it also did not came into being until then. This meant marriage not other types of sexual behavior that was frowned upon.

Where did Cain get his wife? This is a question because people want there to be some other people, but there was not.

1 Corinthians:15-22
For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
If we came from some other person or group we would not be included. We all sin and we all need Christ because we all come from Adam.

Genesis:3-20
Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
Not some or a group, but all.

Cain's wife was his sister as were the other couples.
They lived a long time and would have all had many children, so very quickly there was no need for close family connections.

Abraham was married to his half-sister Sarah and God did not frown upon this but made sure they had a child.
Genesis: 20-12
Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father though not of my mother; and she became my wife.

17 Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” 18 And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!”
19 Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.

Leviticus 18:8-18 God gives them a long list of who they should not have relations with. Listing 9 family members.

Hi
Jacob marrying sisters Leah and Rachel. Both daughters of his mother's brother.
I mean why travel far to track down your close blood relatives to marry? There must be a good reason that is not yet apparent to me.

That would make them his cousins. Cousin marriage is not incest. In nearly all parts of the world cousin marriage is common.

In acts it says we are one blood, one race. And we know from genesis that we came from two people, that makes us all distant relatives. We have no option BUT to marry a relative. But due to similiarities in genetic flaws in closely related people, God forbade brothers and sisters and parents and children to marry. Which is a good thing. But that law did not always exist. Adam and eves children all married their brother or sister. Granted they lived thousands of years and had probably hundreds of children. At this point, incest was required to be fruitful and multiply. And due to being so close in time to the garden of eden and the perfect creation, their was no time for genetic mutations to exist. So because there were no genetic flaws yet in the human race, close family relations was allowed. In leviticus there were so many various tribes and cultures that close family relations was both unnecessary and at this point may have been harmful, so it was outlawed. On the right side of this link is a video about it, it's six minutes, I downloaded it earlier and posted it to facebook. It's pretty good.
Who Was Cain’s Wife?

 

[coffee4u]

At this point, incest was required to be fruitful and multiply.

It wasn't incest as God had not yet called it incest.

 

[createdtoworship]

It wasn't incest as God had not yet called it incest.

well under the current definition of incest it was incest, looking backward. Yes incest has a connatation of evil, and due to genetic problems with close marriages, but that was not part of the original situation, so you are partly correct. But looking back it is accurate to say God allowed incest. But incest was not a bad thing, after all every single one of us are related right now. I could be wrong, but that is how I look at it.

 

[coffee4u]

Words have power and that word comes loaded with meaning as being disgusting, perverted and sinful, yet the marriages between the children of Adam and Eve were what God had planned for. It's easily possible by the time Seth married that his wife wasn't his sister since Adam was 130 by the time he was born but she must have still been closely related. I just don't think it's the right word to use and not accurate since the word came from the Latin incestus, which has a general meaning of "impure, unchaste" so probably not a word until at least the 3rd Century BC.
God defines what is impure.
“Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.’”

 

[createdtoworship]

Words have power and that word comes loaded with meaning as being disgusting, perverted and sinful, yet the marriages between the children of Adam and Eve were what God had planned for. It's easily possible by the time Seth married that his wife wasn't his sister since Adam was 130 by the time he was born but she must have still been closely related. I just don't think it's the right word to use and not accurate since the word came from the Latin incestus, which has a general meaning of "impure, unchaste" so probably not a word until at least the 3rd Century BC.
God defines what is impure.
“Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.’”

I don't have a moral problem with it. See adam and eve probably lived (what) 900 years or something? If you have 2 kids every ten years, that is 176 children. If each of those children had almost 200 kids each, now in two generations you have over thirty thousand people. So by that time it's a small city of relatives. But you probably never met people from the clan on the other side of the city. So the stigma of the incest relates to close family, and that was only the first few years. Then again after noah this happened again. So we mainly look at parent child relationships as wrong, and brother sister. That is the two that make us uncomfortable culturally. But in reality that was only like that the first ten or twenty years, by that time, it would be cousins then second cousins, then distant relatives. So technically the incest that we define it was really only for a short period.

 

[coffee4u]

That's true too, but I am not using that word for it. To me the word incest is associated with depravity and sin so I won't use it in regards to Cain and his wife since that wasn't what it was.

 

[createdtoworship]

That's true too, but I am not using that word for it. To me the word incest is associated with depravity and sin so I won't use it in regards to Cain and his wife since that wasn't what it was.

yeah you don't have to use any words you don't feel comfortable using. But technically speaking and according to most definitions, early humans did do incest. But again, in that day and age it was not forbidden. But again you don't have to agree with those dictionaries, I am just saying that they do define it the way it was done in the Bible.

 

[coffee4u]

My concern is using that word around non-Christians will only leave them with the impression that what Cain and his wife did was sinful and depraved. Which will then leave them wondering why God would allow it.
Not that Cain was an upstanding citizen by any means, but at least he should be vilified for what sins he actually did do, not his perceived sins.

 

[Francis Drake]

Ok. But oh yuk! Is it not naturally repulsive?

The emotional yuk factor is largely cultural. That includes the yuk at seeing how gross your brother/sister was when growing up!

Does not nature demand very different genes for healthy strong offspring? Maybe it's just me but it is just a no no, anyone even remotely connected by blood.

The scientific yuk factor is genuine, but not dangerous back then among a tiny earth population.

Was Abraham married to Sarah his half sister?

What about Lot and his daughters? Wow!

Lot and his daughters can be discounted as it was a deliberate immoral act.

The nearer people were to the point of creation, the less the gene pool problem was. ie. All genes found in mankind surely come from Adam. So Adam and Eve had no problem in reproducing healthy offspring, likewise the interbreeding in their offspring siblings.

Over the centuries, as people groups spread apart, certain characteristics were bred out, and other bad ones multiplied. That's where inbreeding caused danger. That's why it became illegal under the Law of Moses, but not before.

 

[coffee4u]

All genes found in mankind surely come from Adam.

Adam and Eve. You get 50% of your genes from each parent.

 

[RDKirk]

Does not nature demand very different genes for healthy strong offspring?

Apparently "nature" does not, because in every other species mating occurs between siblings and parents without hesitation.