Examples of Incest in Genesis

Even though the Law of Moses will condemn so much of what happens in Genesis, there is a lot of incest in the book. I have already explained that having children in Genesis was more important than incest. But I'd like to pursue this deeper and in other ways because there is so much of it going on in Genesis.

1. I'd like to begin with Cain's wife. The great question of every doubter is: where did Cain get his wife? Good question, no answer. But some have suggested that Cain obviously married his sister - the only possibility if one believes that Adam and Eve are the only people of their day.

Another option offered is that there was a pre-Adamic race - that is, there was a group or groups of people that lived before Adam and Eve.

2. We don't know anything about Abraham and Sarah before they were adults called by God to move to a land they had never seen. We do know that Sarah was barren and that she was the half sister to Abraham.

3. Abraham's son Isaac married his father's brother's granddaughter Rebekah. To put it another way, Abraham's brother was Nahor. The granddaughter of Nahor married the son of Abraham. Or better yet, Isaac married his cousin's daughter.

4. Lot's 2 daughters had children from their dad.

5. Isaac's son Jacob married 2 of his cousins from his mother's side.

6. When Esau saw that his parents didn't like his Canaanite wives, he married his cousin from his father's side to make his parents happy.

7. Finally, Judah's daughter-in-law Tamar slept with Judah in order to get a child for her dead husband.

So here is my conclusion. Esau saw very clearly that his family liked to keep marriage and relationships in the family. This was a tight knit family who liked to keep things among people they trusted probably because they were a nomadic family - they moved around in tents and had as little contact with outsiders as was necessary.

Contact outside of the family could go poorly as happened to Dinah who was raped by a local prince. Lot settled into a city and mingled with a population that was evil and doomed for destruction. Esau's Canaanite wives (family outsiders) were a problem to Isaac and Rebekah.

Abraham never trusted people in the cities he visited. He pawned off his wife because he thought they would kill him and take her as his wife. He believed they were immoral when in fact the king of Gerar rightly rebuked Abraham for his lack of morality. Abraham's excuse: "I didn't think the fear of God was in you." This by the way is the source of all kinds of evil. People who wrongly judge others to be evil will fight evil that does not exist with evil that does exist.

This episode with Abraham shows that he had a huge distrust of outsiders, and yet, when people, friends or strangers, came to visit him he and his family were very hospitable. Both Abraham and Lot welcomed the strangers who turned out to be angels.

Conclusion - When strangers came to visit they were warmly welcomed, but when they when visiting other places, strangers were not trusted, in fact, the worst was assumed.