The Land of Nod

The Land of Nod

Where is the land of Nod ? Who do we know that lived in the land of Nod?

Genesis 4:12 (ASV)
12 when you till the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto you its strength; a fugitive and a wanderer shall you be in the earth.

After Cain killed Abel and was declared a “fugitive and vagabond” by God

Bible says: he “went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod”

Genesis 4:16 (ASV)
16 And Cain went out from the presence of Jehovah, and lived in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.

Genesis 4:17 (ASV)
17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he built a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.

It was in this land “Nod” that “Cain knew his wife”

And it was here that his son, Enoch, was born.

Was there a land of Nod before Cain was banished there?

Did Cain find his wife in the land of Nod?

Were there humans living in Nod before Cain?

It is very likely that when Moses wrote the name “Nod” (Genesis 4:16), he was using a figure of speech called“prolepsis”(the assignment of something, such as an event or name, to a time that precedes it).

People often use prolepsis for the sake of convenience, so that the reader or audience can better understand what is being communicated.

In Wayne Jackson’s book: Biblical Figures of Speech – He deals with this concept

Prolepsis

“The term ‘prolepsis’ derives from a compound Greek word. signifying "to take before." It is a figure of speech by which the time sequenceof things is altered. An event may be described as if it already had occurred. Or, information from a latter time period may be injectedinto an earlier record forclarity's sake”.

A modern example might be: "President Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky." He was not President at the time ofhis birth. But the later fact is imported into the statement.

Consider that when John,prepares to record the event of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. He mentions hisfriend's sisters, Mary and Martha

John 11:1-2 (ASV)
1 Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, of the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
2 And it was that Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.

The anointing, did not occur until later.

John 12:3 (ASV)
3 Mary therefore took a pound of ointment of pure nard, very precious, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.

Apostle condenses the time frame for identification purposes.

That is prolepsis. Another Example:

God rested

Genesis 2:1-3 (ASV)
1 And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
2 And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
3 And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made.

Creation week, Moses said God rested on the seventh day.

The Lord blessed and sanctified (made holy) the seventh day.

Text does not specify, precisely when the Sabbath was "hallowed." We assumed that theSabbath became a"holy day" for all of mankind from the seventh day.

No record for the first several thousand years that anyone kept the Sabbath.

Which was authorized under the Mosaic system.

There is not a single passage in Genesis about observing Sabbath.

TheBible reveals that the "holy day" Sabbath was made known at Sinai

Nehemiah 9:14 (ASV)
and made known unto them thy holy Sabbath, and commanded them commandments, and statutes, and a law, by Moses thy servant,

Deuteronomy 5:3 (ASV) Moses speaking just before entering into the land of Canaan
Jehovah made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.

Deuteronomy 5:12 (ASV)
Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as Jehovah thy God commanded thee.

Ezekiel 20:10-12 (ASV)
10 So I caused them to go forth out of the land of Egypt, and brought them into the wilderness.
11 And I gave them my statutes, and showed them mine ordinances, which if a man do, he shall live in them.
12 Moreover also I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am Jehovah that sanctified them.

Nounique "sign" between the Lord and Israelif everyone had been practicing Sabbath.Moses wrote the Genesis account after the Sabbath law was in place.

When he recorded the narrative regarding God's rest on the seventh day, he included the later information regarding its sanctification.

This is prolepsis.

Before the church

Christ taught thatif the wayward person cannot be reached by personal persuasion, the matter is to be brought before "the church"

Matthew 18:17 (ASV)
17 And if he refuses to hear them, tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican.

At this time, there was “no church."

McGarvey comments: "The Church is here spoken of before it had an actual existence, because the Savior was giving preparatory instruction and was compelled, as in many other instances, to speak by anticipation"

Spirits in prison

Example of combining two time references in a single statement

1 Peter 3:19-20 (ASV)
19 in which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison,
20 that aforetime were disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water:

It is said that Christ "in the spirit" went and "preached unto the spirits inprison."

Whatever the passage may say, it provides no justification for a "second chance".

That would contradict Jesus' own teaching about the non-passage of a person from one region of Hades into the other.

Hebrews 9:27 (ASV)
27 And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this comesthe judgment;

The most compelling explanation is that the apostleemploys figurative 1anguage.

He compresses two events, separated by time, into a single statement.

The Spirit of thepre-incarnate Christ spoke God's truth through the prophets of old

1 Peter 1:11 (ASV)
11 searching what timeor what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow them.

Just as the Lord preached through his apostles after his ascension, back into heaven

Ephesians 2:17 (ASV)
17 and He came and preached peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that were nigh:

Thepreaching was by the Spirit of Christ, through Noah, to the patriarch's contemporaries, thedisobedient people of the pre-Flood world.

But at the time Peter composes this letter, those disobedient spirits are already confined in theprison of theHadean realm.

The two historical episodes are simply combined, in a single expression, for thesake of convenience and emphasis.

For a similar example,

Peter 4:6 (ASV)
6 For unto this end was the gospel preached even to the dead, that they might be judged indeed according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.

The apostle notes the gospel, at some point in the past, was "preached" to the "dead,"

Those who were dead at the time he penned the letter.

Wayne’s final note in his book: The figures discussed in this chapter are important, ones with which the Bible student should be familiar, and thus learn how to recognize.

END OF WAYNES NOTES

For example, I might say, “My wife and I dated for 6 months before we got married,” when actually she was not my wife when we were dating.

We may see a special on television about when President George W. Bush was a boy, but the fact is, George W. Bush was not President of the United States when he was a child.

Another example of prolepsis is found in Genesis 13:3

Genesis 13:3 (ASV)
3 And he went on his journeys from the South even to Bethel, unto the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai,

This area did not wear the name Bethel until years later when Jacob gave it that name.

Genesis 28:19 (ASV)
19 And he called the name of that place Bethel. But the name of the city was Luz at the first.

However, when Moses wrote of this name hundreds of years later, he was free to use it even when writing about a time before the name actually was given.

Back to Nod :

When Moses used the name Nod in Genesis 4, the reader must understand the land probably was not given that name until sometime after Cain moved there. This is consistent with the meaning of the name Nod (“wandering”), which in all probability was given because God told Cain he was to be a wanderer upon the Earth

Genesis 4:12 (ASV)
when you till the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto you its strength; a fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be in the earth.

Thus, the land of Nodalmost certainly was not an area filled with people whom Cain would eventually befriend. It would become that in time; nevertheless, it probably was not such a place upon his arrival.

But, someone might ask, did Cain not find his wife in the land of Nod?

The Bible never tells us that Cain’s wife came from Nod. The text simply says:

Genesis 4:16-17 (ASV)
16 And Cain went out from the presence of Jehovah, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.
17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he built a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.

“To conclude that God specially created others besides Adam and Eve because “there was a large group of people living in Nod when Cain arrived” and “from this group Cain got his wife” is faulty reasoning and sheer speculation.”

The Bible teaches the very opposite when it explicitly states that “Adam was the first man”

1 Corinthians 15:45 (ASV)
45 So also it is written, the first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

And that Eve would be the mother of all living

Genesis 3:20 (ASV)
20 And the man called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

“It’s clear that there were no other people on the Earth contemporaneous with Adam & Eve (except, of course, their own children). Even though some allege that God specially created other people in addition to Adam and Eve during the creation week.”

Such cannot be defended

THIS BRINGS US TO A QUESTION

Genesis 3:20 says that Eve was the “mother of all living.”

If that is the case, where did her son Cain find a wife?

Answer:

Many infidels and skeptics have used this apparent inconsistency as evidence that Genesis record is not correct. While it is true the Bible is not specific on this matter, there is no difficulty in suggesting a reasonable solution that does no violence to Scriptural interpretation.

The most common solution is to propose that Cain married a near relative—perhaps a sister.

Initially this may seem a radical idea, but as we will note, it is the most realistic option.

We are told that Adam and Eve had three sons—Cain, Abel, and sometime later, Seth.

We also are told that Adam was the father of “other sons and daughters”.

Genesis 5:4 (ASV)
4 and the days of Adam after he begat Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters.

Eve had Cain and Abel soon after leaving Eden

Genesis 4:1-2 (ASV)
1 And the man knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man with the help of Jehovah.
2 And again she bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

But she could have had other children between Cain & Ableand Abel’s death.

And between that murder of Abel and the birth of Seth.

In any case, one female offspring could later have become Cain’s wife.

Cain could not have married someone that God made other than through Adam and Eve

The Bible makes it plainas we read before:

Genesis 3:20 (ASV)
20 And the man called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

If Adam was the first man (1 Corinthians 15:45) Second time

1 Corinthians 15:45 (ASV)
45 So also it is written, the first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

If Eve was the mother of all, then it is clear that there were no “other people” left for Cain to marry. The population of the Earth came directly through the lineage of Adam and Eve.

There would have been no shortage of potential mates. A glance at the rapidly growing population of the antediluvian world shows that the people of those times took seriously God’s command to “be fruitful, and multiply”

Genesis 1:28 (ASV)
28 And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

Quote “Many people immediately see a problem with marriages that must, of necessity, be incestuous in nature. Remember, however, that incest itself was outlawed only with the coming of the Mosaic covenant (Leviticus 18). There was no need for strict laws on marriage partners in the early Patriarchal Age (apart from the divine “one man, one woman, for life” institution), and for at least one good reason: during this time, man was in a relatively pure state, at least physically, having left not long before the perfect condition in which he was created and the Garden that had sustained his life.”

Adam and Eve could have lived forever had it not been for their corruption by sin.

Genesis 3:1-6 (ASV)
1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which Jehovah God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden?
2 And the woman said unto the serpent, Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat:
3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5 for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.
6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.

Hence, no harmful genetic traits had emerged at this point that could have been expressed in the children of closely related partners.

So when one reads verses in the Bible that seem to mix up time and events, we need to understand that the writer is probable using a “PROLEPSIS”.

We do it all the time without even thinking about it.

But this is not a “Prolepsis”.

Today is the day of Salvation. Yesterday may have been the day of Salvation.

Tomorrow may be the day of Salvation.

But we can not go back to yesterday, and we are not assured of tomorrow, thus:

Today IS the day of Salvation to all those who are out of Christ and are still living.