GENESIS 4-5 and BEYOND: DESCENDANTS of ADAM and EVE

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The Genesis 4 and 5 accounts recorded the family lives of Adam and Eve and their descendants until Noah’s Flood. The commentaries below read between the lines of scripture (like Genesis 3) to explain why these events happened as they did. This section ends with brief introductions to the remaining accounts in Genesis chapters 6-50. Chapters 6-11 are covered in more detail in Topical notes 3-4.

Origin and Authorship of Genesis 4 and 5:

Genesis 4 smoothly continues the account of Genesis 3 but “the Lord” (Yahweh) is used as God’s name throughout this account from its beginning in v1 with Eve clearly speaking. (Since Eve previously used Elohim for God in Genesis 3:3 she evidently used both single names for Him.) Adam wouldn’t have originated the account of Genesis 4 because it doesn’t use his unique compound name for God, Yahweh-Elohim, that he used exclusively in the accounts of Genesis 2 and 3.  Apparently she chose the more reverent name for God, Yahweh, in this account rather than impersonal Elohim she used in Genesis 3:3 after God evicted them from His idyllic Garden and she saw how He punished the Serpent for deceiving her (Genesis 3:14-15).  However, important evidence for Eve’s origin of this account was it named three of Cain’s female descendants (vv19-22) and also mentioned Cain’s (unnamed) wife (v17), while Seth and the later male originators of the accounts in Genesis 5 didn’t include any women. No (canonical) scripture suggests that Cain’s family originated their genealogies. The family centering of this account and including several women are strong evidence that Eve originated it, and she is the only other possible originator who lived during this early period.

Highlights of Genesis chapter 4

Adam and Eve began having children shortly after God evicted them from His Garden in Eden.  This account opens on a somber note with imagery of Eve regretfully sitting outside of the Garden with their newborn first son (Cain) in her lap.  She seemed pleased that he was a male child (v1). Possibly she hoped he would be the Savior (Messiah) God promised in Genesis 3:15 who would restore their relationship with Him so they could return to living in the sheltered Garden and escape their endless daily toil and His other judgments. However, this Savior wouldn’t come for thousands of years and it wasn’t His purpose to give humans an easy life (New Testament, 2 Corinthians 1:4).  Their first son, Cain proved to be a terrible disappointment.

Cain murdered his brother Abel (Genesis 4:2-16):

Cain was a farmer while his brother, Abel was a shepherd. Farming the ground God cursed with abundant thorny weeds that rapidly grew to maturity (Genesis 3:18) and had to be removed daily was hard work. So he naturally resented his younger brother Abel who seemed to have an easy job leading his sheep to grass and water while he watched them multiply. Eventually the two brothers each offered a sacrifice to God. Cain offered vegetables he grew and Abel offered fat portions of sheep that he killed from his flock. Cain’s anger erupted into murderous intent when Abel’s burnt animal offering was accepted by God while his burnt sacrifice of vegetables that he raised was rejected.  Perhaps God caused a wind to blow away Cain’s offering and disperse the smoke. However God previously told Adam and Eve He required sacrifice of certain animal types He chose in order to approach Him, that was implied by v6c (see commentary for Genesis 3:21). Apparently Cain knew what God required, but bartering his crop for a sacrificial sheep from his despised younger brother seemed demeaning to him so he went ahead with his own veggie sacrifice.   

Despite God’s earlier warning to Cain about his anger toward Abel before their sacrifices (vv5-7), Cain murdered his brother anyway. God questioned Cain about Abel’s whereabouts, perhaps while He was in human form as the incarnate Son in God’s triunity. At first Cain rudely denied wrongdoing by asking God “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (v9) but God cornered him.  He placed a curse on the ground for Cain (who was a farmer) so the land wouldn’t yield crops for him any longer, then He drove Cain from the fertile land in Eden (vv10-12).  Cain showed only remorse for God’s punishment and possible retribution by the future descendants of his parents, rather than sorrow and repentance for killing his brother (v10).  However, God assured Cain that no one would kill him so He placed His mark on Cain to protect him. Cain fled to the land of Nod east of Eden (Genesis 4:16). According to Jewish historian Josephus he took his wife with him and they settled there and had children (Genesis 4:17){1}.

A life lesson from this account is: dwelling on perceived wrongs like Cain did causes evil thoughts that lead to evil actions.

Cain’s marriage (Genesis 4:17):

Over the centuries many bible readers have wondered where Cain got his wife. Confusion resulted because she wasn’t introduced earlier in this account before she lived in Nod as Cain’s wife.  According to Josephus (above), Cain was already married when God banished him to Nod{1}. Although Josephus might have shrewdly understood this from Moses' record in Genesis, more likely he used an extra-biblical information source that included this detail about Cain’s marriage. He was a Jewish historian from a priestly family so he had access to ancient Hebrew records (below).  Apparently, Adam and Eve had an unrecorded daughter that explains where Cain got his wife before he left Eden, in Genesis 4:16-17{1}.

Where did Josephus get this information? 

Josephus would have obtained the extra-biblical details about Cain’s marriage, speaking animals, and other topics not mentioned in the scriptures from original records from before the Flood that were later translated into Hebrew but Moses didn’t include in the Torah and were presumably stored in Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.  (More about Josephus is covered in Authorship of the Hebrew law, Introducing Jewish Historian Josephus).  Topical note 11 explains that the pre-Flood records Moses later used as source material for his book of Genesis were translated and preserved by early descendants of Shem in the Middle East. They were later translated into Hebrew and kept by these families in Egypt (Authorship of the Hebrew Law). Moses inherited the Hebrew accounts but he reasonably omitted some details in his Book of Genesis.  Evidence for this unused source material by Moses that apparently remained accessible to Jewish religious leaders comes from the ancient song the Hmong people of Indo-China sing at weddings and funerals that predated Moses and accurately paraphrases the creation, Flood, and scattering mankind over the earth described in Moses' book of Genesis. Their song included that the Flood ended after 50 days of drizzle, a minor point that is not in Moses’ record in Genesis 6-8.*

*Cooper, Bill, 2011, The Authenticity of the Book of Genesis (hardbound book), pp241-243. 

Why wasn’t Adam and Eve’s daughter recorded? 

Eve who evidently originated the genealogy in Genesis 4 named three of Cain's female descendants in Genesis 4:19-22 ({2}, Adam and Eve’s family tree) and mentioned Cain’s wife.  This raises the question of why she didn’t record her own daughter in this account, or acknowledge that Cain’s wife who she mentioned (and must have been her daughter) was her daughter, or even give her name (v17)!  That Eve completely avoided mentioning that she had a daughter in her family genealogy suggests that something was wrong with their relationship-

Adam and Eve must have told their children about their brief lives in the idyllic Garden that God had made for them. Certainly, their daughter was very upset to learn her parents deliberately ate fruit from the tree that God clearly forbade them to eat. Then God banished them from the Garden where they ate luscious fruits from trees and their only work was to prune the plants. He committed them and their descendants to lives of toil outside- where they would eventually all die (Genesis 3:19).  Their daughter was confronted with a hard life each day: She apparently made family clothing from sheep skins for their lives in the cool breezy air. And she helped her brothers with their work while they lived a meager existence eating the vegetables Cain grew in his field that God cursed with over-abundant, fast-growing thorny weeds (Genesis 3:18). So, she likely never ended complaining to her parents about their disobedience to God which would have deeply grieved them. Marrying her ungodly brother Cain who had negative attitudes about God and His judgments that were likely similar to her own was against her parents’ opposition and further upset them. Her persistent contrary behavior finally prompted Eve to disown her daughter when she fled to Nod with Cain that left her mother alone with her father.  So it’s not surprising Eve later made her family record that mentioned her girl only as Cain’s unnamed wife (v17) when the couple lived in Nod.

Accomplishments of Cain’s family (Genesis 4:17-24):

Adam and Eve certainly visited Cain’s family to collect their genealogical information for Eve's family record apparently over 100 years after Cain fled to Nod. Since Eve evidently disliked her daughter, possibly Adam suggested their visit. Cain, the patriarch of his family would not have been hard to find. By then he had numerous adult descendants and any human who Adam and Eve encountered in Nod who all spoke the common language (Genesis 11:1) would have been his descendant and given directions since they came alone with peaceful intentions. While visiting Cain’s family they discovered the impressive accomplishments made by Cain’s ungodly, belligerent family (vv23-24): Cain lived in a walled city{1} he built that he named after his first son, and his descendants forged bronze and iron tools, played musical instruments they developed, and others lived as nomadic ranchers in tents they made and raised livestock they domesticated, perhaps cattle and oxen. This suggests that Cain's family ate meat ahead of God's permission (Genesis 9:2-3), and wild plants because the ground in Nod wasn't suitable for farming (Genesis 4:12-16). The descendants of Adam and Eve’s later son, Seth through Noah evidently continued as vegetarians until God allowed Noah's family to eat meat after the Flood (Genesis 9:3). According to Josephus, Cain ended his life by inventing weights and measures{1}.

Genesis 5:3 implied Adam and Eve stopped having children for 130 years. Each child ended in disaster so Eve naturally was upset by what happened to them and she would have been reluctant to have more children, although Josephus recorded Adam wanted more{1}.

Apparently visiting Cain’s family and seeing their accomplishments prompted Eve to want more children of their own after this lengthy lapse. Genesis 5:3-4 records that after their next son godly Seth, Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters for hundreds of years. Their (noteworthy) male children recorded in Genesis 5:3-29 were god-fearing and turned out well. Josephus wrote that Seth's descendants developed the science of astronomy and inscribed (in writing!) their discoveries on brick and stone pillars before the Flood. He recorded the stone pillar survived the Flood to at least to the 1st century CE{1}.

Highlights of Genesis chapter 5:

Genesis 5 contains a series of genealogies of Adam and Eve’s godly male descendants through Noah and his sons that was started by their later son Seth{2}. Verses 1-2 include a very brief “third” creation account of only the first two humans (Adam and Eve) that used Elohim for God’s name.  Verse 2 recorded that God originally called both humans “man” (Hebrew Adm, here meaning “mankind”), and that He created them “male and female”.

These genealogies began with Adam's son Seth who lived for 912 years, (until about 1050 years after Adam’s creation, halfway through the 2200 year pre-Flood era). Adam’s death at 930 years and Seth’s death about 112 years later were recorded.  Seth’s descendants continued these accounts until Noah's Flood, and Lamech, Noah’s father finished them. They were recorded after writing was developed before Noah’s Flood. In Genesis 5:1, Moses referred to this pre-Flood record as a "scroll" (Hebrew "sphr")*, or “written account”[NIV] (Topical note 4, Did writing really exit in pre-Flood times?). Moses later used these genealogies that were kept on Noah’s Ark then translated after the Flood and passed through religious Hebrew families as his source material for his account in Genesis 5 (in modern bibles).

*Scripture4All Hebrew interlinear bible.

Adam and Eve’s descendants by Cain and Seth who were mentioned in Genesis 4 and 5 married and produced extended families. A human population of possibly a million souls grew for 2200 years until the Flood, but names of only a few noteworthy individuals were recorded in Genesis. God later destroyed all the violent humans and animals in the Flood (Genesis 6:8 and Topical note 4, Noah’s Flood). Then He restarted humanity with just Noah’s family- eight persons who believed Him and the less violent animals He selected to repopulate the whole Earth.

God didn’t prohibit marriage of close family relatives until His laws in Leviticus 18:6,17 were given by Moses thousands of years later. By then the human genome had acquired mutations and this became an unsafe practice. 

Brief introductions to Genesis chapters 6-50

The content of these chapters shows they were originated by successive human generations.  Authorship was included or implied at the beginning of each section or gleaned from the content. 

Genesis 6:1-8 described the usual belligerent human lifestyles before the Flood that explained why God wanted to destroy the violent humans and animals.  This appears to be an editorial update by an unknown author who used “the Lord” (Yahweh) for God’s name. The wording suggests it was added shortly after the Flood perhaps by one of Noah's sons who was familiar with decadent pre-Flood lifestyles. 

Genesis 6:9-9:28 is “the account of Noah” that described the Flood as originally recorded by him. Noah’s brief dialogue about his sons at the end in Genesis 9:26-27 recorded him using both names for God, Elohim and Yahweh (like Eve). So he apparently used them interchangeably throughout his Flood account and they would not be evidence for multiple authors for this account (that critics claim). The pre-Flood written accounts and Noah's Flood record were passed on by Noah to his eldest son Shem. Shem’s descendants translated, recopied, and preserved them. Eventually his Hebrew descendants provided them to Moses who then compiled them into what are now Genesis chapters 1-9.

Genesis 10:1-11:9 introduced “the account of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, Noah’s sons”. The famous “Table of Nations” section in 10:1-32 lists the earliest nations Noah’s descendants began after the Flood.  Conservative bible scholars prepared maps that show where these first nations were located (Topical note 3{8}).  These maps also suggest the migration routes the humans took after they were dispersed from Mesopotamia (Genesis 11:8) to “fill the earth” as God commanded in Genesis 9:1.  This account runs through Genesis 11:9 since “the Lord” (Yahweh) was used for God’s name throughout.  

Genesis 11:10-26 introduced “the account of Shem”, the ancestor of Eber (or Heber) and the Hebrews.  It is a genealogy of Shem’s early descendants to Abram (later renamed Abraham).  Abraham, from Ur of Chaldea, became the father of the Hebrew nation (Genesis 17:8).  By his time c2000BCE cuneiform writing had been in use for hundreds of years by the civilizations in Mesopotamia. Their pre-Flood and early post-Flood family records may have later been translated to cuneiform script and kept by Abraham’s family and their early Hebrew descendants until the written Hebrew language was developed c1850BCE.  

Genesis chapters 12-50 continued with the accounts of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their descendants and God’s promises to them.  The mothers of Abraham and his wife Sarah (whose names were not recorded in scripture) were apparently responsible for instilling an exclusive faith in God in them because their father Terah worshiped other Gods (Joshua 24:2).  These Hebrew family stories may have been kept orally for a few generations while the Hebrews lived in Canaan without a written language until they moved to Egypt as Jacob’s extended family for 400 years.  Written Hebrew was developed as a shortened form of Egyptian hieroglyphics shortly after Jacob’s family arrived in Egypt c1850BCE (Authorship of the Hebrew Law).  Later Moses compiled all of these old Hebrew family records into his book of Genesis during the Exodus with God’s direction.

Click on live web link below to view internet reference {2}

{1}Maier, Paul, 1988, Josephus- The Essential Writings, Kregel publ, p20-21. Jewish historian Josephus recorded that Cain left his homeland (Eden) with his wife and they settled in Nod after a long journey. They had had children there and he built a walled city. Eventually Cain invented weights and measures. Adam longed for more children according to Josephus, and later he and Eve had a son Seth, and many other sons and daughters (Genesis 5:3-4).

{2}https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/biblestudy/images/5/5f/Adam_Genealogy.png/revision/latest?cb=20200702220212 

This chart shows Adam and Eve’s family tree through Noah's three sons. Notice that some of Seth’s and Cain’s descendants had the same names that were apparently popular at this time. Seth and his descendants’ family line began 130 years after Cain’s first descendants were born.

{3} See footnote that Introduces Jewish historian Josephus in the Authorship of the Hebrew Law commentary.

W. Cook

Independent researcher June 2026

contact: genesismakessense@gmail.com

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