February 15, 2003, Vol.3,
No.4.
Two new articles every two weeks.
Bible Question? E-mail
us.
THIS ISSUE: "Two
Questions from Genesis" (see
below)
and "What About Drinking?"
ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS:
Two Questions from
Genesis
by Tom Rainwater
 .
QUESTION: I have two
questions from Genesis: Who did Cain marry? How big was Noah's
ark?
ANSWER: Hi! Thanks for
your questions. I'll answer them both in the order you asked.
Who did Cain marry?
"And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore
Enoch..." (Genesis 4:17)
Cain would have married another of the children of Adam and
Eve. After God created Adam and Eve, He told them to "be
fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28). Evidently they did
so. The Bible doesn't tell how many children they had or even
if Cain and Abel were their first ones. We're told about Cain
and Abel because of the lessons to be learned from what they
did. Abel is an example of faith and obedience to God (Genesis
4:4; Hebrews 11:4). Cain is an example of disobedience (Jude
11) and brotherly hatred (1 John 3:12), illustrating the consequences
of not resisting sin (Genesis 4:7,10-12). We should not assume
that just because the Bible focuses on Cain and Abel that there
were no other children at that time.
For the generation after Adam and Eve to multiply, at least
one of Adam's sons had to marry one of Adam's daughters. Probably
all marriages of that one generation were brother-sister marriages.
It's likely that mutant genes were not yet present in the human
race so that no genetic harm came out of marriages to close relatives.
It wasn't until a great many generations later in the time of
Moses that a sexual relationship between a brother and sister
was forbidden. (Leviticus 18:11; 20:17; Deuteronomy 27:22).
How big was Noah's ark?
The measurements of Noah's ark are found in Genesis 6:14-16:
"Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou
make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length
of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty
cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou
make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and
the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with
lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it." (KJV)
The measurement of a "cubit" was theoretically the
distance between the elbow and forefinger of a man of average
height. A conservative cubit length would be about 17.5 inches.
Noah's ark was 300 cubits long (437.5 feet), which is longer
than a football field. It was 30 cubits high (43.75 feet), which
is as high as a modern four or five-story building. It was 50
cubits wide (72.92 feet), which is half as wide as a football
field's width.
It had three decks inside. It had approximately 95,707.5 total
square feet, which is about the size of 20 basketball courts.
That would have been about 31,902.5 square feet per deck level.
The ark's capacity would have been 1,395,734.3 cubit feet, which
is over 520 boxcars worth of space. As you can see, the ark had
an incredible amount of space -- plenty for lots of animals.
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