A Question by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 1, 1863

A Question.

By Editor

BRO. AMADON: In Vol. xi, No. 11, of The Youth's Instructor, in the story of Cain and Abel, there seems to be a natural query in the minds of some of the children who those men were that Cain expected to meet, who might kill him. As the narrative stands, it would seem that Cain was the only one then living of Adam's posterity.

Yours seeking after light. A. B. WILLIAMS.

Clinton, Wis., Nov. 15, 1863.

ANSWER.—The above question we suppose was propounded for the benefit of the Instructor, but being somewhat crowded for room this number, we subjoin our answer and pass it over to the Review. As this point has been critically examined by others, we submit the following explanation from the Commentary of Dr. Adam Clarke, containing his own view and that of Mr. Dodd, which we think is the true solution of the difficulty mentioned.

G. W. A.

"Most people who read this account wonder why Cain should dread being killed, when it does not appear to them that there were any inhabitants on the earth at that time besides himself and his parents. To correct this mistake, let it be observed that the death of Abel took place in the one hundred and twenty-eighth or one hundred and twenty-ninth year of the world. Now, 'supposing Adam and Eve to have had no other sons than Cain and Abel in the year of the world one hundred and twenty-eight, yet as they had daughters married to these sons, their descendants would make a considerable figure on the earth. Supposing them to have been married in the nineteenth year of the world, they might easily have had each eight children, some males and some females, in the twenty-fifth year. In the fiftieth year there might proceed from them in a direct line sixty-four persons; in the seventy-fourth year there would be five hundred and twelve; in the ninety-eighth year, four thousand and ninety-six; in the one hundred and twenty-second they would amount to thirty-two thousand seven hundred and sixty-eight; if to these we add the other children descended from Cain and Abel, their children, and their children's children, we shall have, in the aforesaid one hundred and twenty-eight years four hundred and twenty-one thousand one hundred and sixty-four men capable of generation, without reckoning the women either old or young, or such as are under the age of seventeen.' See Dodd.

"But this calculation may be disputed, because there is no evidence that the antediluvian patriarchs began to have children before they were sixty-five years of age. Now, supposing that Adam at one hundred and thirty years of age had one hundred and thirty children, which is quite possible, and each of these a child at sixty-five years of age, and one in each successive year, the whole, in the one hundred and thirtieth year of the world, would amount to one thousand two hundred and nineteen persons, a number sufficient to found several villages, and to excite the apprehensions under which Cain appeared at this time to labor."