# Cain's mark



## nwink (Jan 4, 2012)

Gen 4:15 says that God set a mark on Cain so that any finding him shouldn't kill him. But I thought there weren't any other people around then? (People say that Cain married his sister as a wife...but if there weren't others then besides Adam's family, who would be killing Cain?)


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## Tim (Jan 4, 2012)

Since people lived a long time, and assuming a young parenthood, multiplication would have happened very quickly. There would have been plenty of people who could have killed Cain.

From Matthew Poole:



> Quest. Whom did Cain fear, when it appears not that there were any but his father and mother?
> 
> Answ. So ignorant people conceive; but it is a fond conceit to think that there were no more men than are expressed in this book, where God never intended to give a catalogue of all men, but only of the church, or those who had some relation to or concern with it. Nay, that there were very many thousands of men now in being, is very credible upon these rational grounds and suppositions.
> 
> ...


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## Pilgrim Standard (Jan 4, 2012)

Calvin on Genesis 4 points out the following


> Although Moses does not state that Cain and Abel were twins it yet seems to me probable that they were so; for, after he has said that Eve, by her first conception, brought forth her firstborn, he soon after subjoins that she also bore another; and thus, while commemorating a double birth, he speaks only of one conception. 2 Let those who think differently enjoy their own opinion; to me, however it appears accordant with reason, when the world had to be replenished with inhabitants, that not only Cain and Abel should have been brought forth at one births but many also afterwards, both males and females.


I think it quite possible that twin birthrates were quite high at this time for the propagation of humanity. 
Also note that Others were certainly born of Adam, else there would have been those who were not born of ordinary generation and that would have serious implications on the covenant.


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## J. Dean (Jan 4, 2012)

Something else to remember: the Bible is virtually silent about the timeline for this. We read it and get the impression that it's a relatively short time period, when in truth it may have been forty or fifty years (remember that the average age was 900 plus years for people at the time). So a sizable population is not inconceivable.


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## rookie (Jan 4, 2012)

I had done some very VERY rough math on this, and I can't remember the number now, but I do remember getting into the double digits of the billions...between Adam and Noah...


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## nwink (Jan 4, 2012)

rookie said:


> I had done some very VERY rough math on this, and I can't remember the number now, but I do remember getting into the double digits of the billions...between Adam and Noah...



Ray, could you explain your method of calculating these numbers?


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## rookie (Jan 4, 2012)

If I remember correctly, I was calculating that they were having children starting at age 100 until they were 900, and were having one child every 5 yrs...very conservative....and no twins, triplets......By the time I had paired them up, from Adam's children till Noah...I remember getting into over 10 billion.....which would explain the global flood. I realize we are not given anything to stand on to calculate such things. But I thought it was fun to speculate on how a local flood made no sense in this context.

I will try to find the formula that I used....


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## Tim (Jan 4, 2012)

That's quite interesting, Ray! I like that sort of thing too.


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## rookie (Jan 4, 2012)

Here's the severely flawed formula, as it doesn't take death into account, and how many children they were having in reality...however, one can speculate...and I initially thought there was only a few thousand...this math proved me so wrong... in this example, I could only go to Jared...my calculator's screen wasn't long enough 

Name years of procreation / years between each child birth = amount of children they personally had.
Adam 800 / 5 = 160 Amount of kids at end of his generation
Seth 80 * 800 / 5 = 12800 
Enos 6400 * 800 / 5 = 1 024 000
Cainan 512 000 * 800 / 5 = 81 920 000
Mahalaleel 40 960 000 * 800 / 5 = 6 553 600 000
Jared 3 276 800 000 * 800 / 5 = 524 288 000 000

In this example, you take 160 kids and divide by 2, (you need a pink and a blue one) and multiply that one by 800 yrs and it starts over again...I know it's flawed, but it does open eyes on what many people including myself, thought there were only a few thousand.


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## GulfCoast Presbyterian (Jan 4, 2012)

I read in a commentary once (I forget which one) that given conditions where there was no real "competition for resources" the population would essentially double every 20 years. I forget where I read that one.


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## KingofBashan (Jan 5, 2012)

A more sophisticated algorithm would take into account death (or time till infertility). 

Algorithm:

REMARK Each of these constants represents averages.
REMARK LifeSpan represents fertile years.
LifeSpan = 700 years
YearsBetweenEachBirth = 5 years
BirthsPerCentury = 100 / YearsBetweenEachBirth

REMARK Algorithm assumes equal birth rate for males and females, and no polygamy, or illigitimate births
REMARK Algorithm assumes the flood occurs 16 centuries after Adam and Eve begin bearing children.

totalPopulation = 2
Array populationPerCentury[16]

REMARK Loop through the centuries, add new population and subtract dying population
FOR century = 1 to 16
totalPopulation = totalPopulation + (totalPopulation / 2) * BirthsPerCentury

REMARK Infertility begins in century 7

IF century > 7 THEN
totalPopulation = totalPopulation - populationPerCentury[century - 7]
ENDIF
populationPerCentury[century] = totalPopulation
NEXT century

REMARK Flood occurs
totalPopulation = 8



I believe the results of this are
beginning 2
century 01 22
century 02 242
century 03 2,662
century 04 29,282
century 05 322,102
century 06 3,543,122
century 07 38,974,340
century 08 428,717,800
century 09 4,715,895,000
century 10 51,874,840,000
century 11 570,623,300,000
century 12 6,276,855,000,000
century 13 6,904,540,000,000
century 14 759,499,400,000,000
century 15 8,354,493,000,000,000
century 16 91,899,420,000,000,000

That is approx 92 Quadrillion. This algorithm assumes each family is having 140 children, and every individual starts a family.

Some Interesting Observations:

If you were to account for some kind of defect rate, let's say 7 children out of 100 is not able to have children, you still get something like 40 Quad.

If you halve the birth rate (70 children per family) and keep the defect rate, you get 2.5 Trillion at the time of the flood. Which to our ears seems a bit more reasonable, but we don't know what life was like in the antedeluvian world. Today's estimated surface area of the earth is 12.6 Billion acres. If the post flood earth is the same dimensions as the pre flood earth, and the entire surface of the pre flood earth was inhabitable (had no seas or lakes or frozen zones, etc), and we assume a population of 2.5 Trillion, each individual only had 218 sq feet of personal space (or ~1000 sq ft for a family of four), unless they had built sky scrapers or underground dwellings.

Given human nature I sincerely doubt families were 140, or even 70 children big. Noah only had 3 sons by the time he was 500, and he was a righteous man. We know polygamy was established by Lamech Cain's son, in which case the population wasn't perfectly paired. I would guess the antedeluvian world was no more populated than say a few centuries ago, or at most about our same population today.

Note: If anyone improves on the algorithm, I would like to see your results.


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## rookie (Jan 5, 2012)

As I had mentioned before....I can't see that there were that many people on the planet, as in the quadrillion number....however, I had always believed there was only a few thousand. But now I see with my calculations, and yours as well, that it was probable there were many, many more than there are currently now. And, as mentioned, we have no evidence of any of it....besides there is an immense amount of oil being pumped out of the ground, which is the result of compressed live animals and humans, there had to have been an immense population. Otherwise, we would have already expired the resources long ago....


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## Pergamum (Jan 6, 2012)

a billion corpses (plus dinosaurs) makes a lot of oil. My next car is gonna be a big SUV!


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## KingofBashan (Jan 6, 2012)

Good point about the oil. lol SUVs


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