One of my relatives put on my FB page that there were no other people in "The Land of Nod" and that it did not say Cain lived there in the Bible.
This is my answer. I wrote it quickly, but if it is confusing in parts, that is because any justification for the story is confusing!
You are right that Genesis 4:16 says Cain "dwelt in the land of Nod." Of course, some versions of the Bible
do not say "dwelt" but say "settled" in the land of Nod, which makes it
sound even more like Cain stayed there. (I am answering as if I am taking the Bible’s words seriously.)
The
only problem with Genesis 4:16, about Cain living in the land of Nod,
is that it is followed by Genesis 4:17, which starts out with the word,
“And” as if it is a continuation. “And Cain “knew” his wife and she
conceived, and bore Enoch, and he builded a city, and called the name of
the city after the name of his son Enoch.” So, after going to the land
of Nod, a woman was around and of birthing age, and Cain had many
people around to build a city.
Some
apologists say that Adam and Eve were not the first people on earth.
Others simply say that Adam and Eve lived a long time and Eve had
daughters who simply were not mentioned. But there is a problem with
that: If you follow the story in Genesis, a lot of things happened
after Cain left and before Eve had another son, Seth, in Genesis 4:25. No
daughters were mentioned for Eve, yet later on, daughters of Enoch’s
descendents are mentioned, so the most logical reason Eve’s daughters
are not mentioned is that she did not have any, at least up to this
point!
Adam
was 130 when he had his third child, Seth. Therefore, if Adam and Eve
were the first people, when Cain left, there was only Adam, Eve and
Cain in the world for a long time, until Eve gave birth to Seth, because Cain was
not around and no one else was around to impregnate Eve and they had to
wait 130 years before Eve had another child (Seth).
I hope this is not getting too confusing!
Let’s
backtrack on the story a bit. In Genesis 4:9. God says, “Cain, where
is Abel? What have you done? I can smell blood under the ground.” God
apparently does not know that Cain killed Abel. God is supposed to
know all, but has to ask questions? But Apologists will say that God is
just giving Cain a chance to fess up.
God
said Cain will be a vagabond and fugitive for life wandering (Nod means
wander) as punishment for killing Abel, so he is not coming back to the
Garden of Eden to mate with Eve. Interestingly, before starting out
for his wandering life, Cain told God he was afraid he would be killed
by everyone he met. This seems to mean there were people out there, but
apologists who subscribe to Adam and Eve being the first people claim
that “Adam lived to 930 years and he and Eve populated the world. Poor
first women in the world, having to give birth over and over! (In
reality, half of the babies born died back then from horrid diseases,
and the actual life span of men was about 27 years.)
As
a solution to Cain being killed by all those people he would meet in
Nod, God put a mark on Cain so that anyone who killed Cain would receive
7 times the punishment (notice God did not protect Cain from dying – he
only punished those who killed). Apologists will say that Cain and God
were talking about the future, and that’s why they talked about
“everyone killing him.” There are an awful lot of excuses that have to
be made to make this story make any sense at all! (With Founder's
Effect, it still does not make any sense.)
Such a convoluted and confusing story should not be how “inspired writing by God” should turn out!
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