Did Adam and Eve have children before the fall?
God said He would increase her pains in childbearing. It sounds like she had already had children.
Genesis 3:12
ESV - 12 The man said, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.
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Asked September 22 2014
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Ruth Deatley
Supporter
For follow-up discussion and general commentary on the topic. Comments are sorted chronologically.
Selena Schwind
I believe that through out the entire Bible God is trying to portray His great plan for his creation....that His creation would be in right relationship with Him. That is the way He created and that is how I believe it will end.
With that in mind, God has obviously not told us everything that happened or was said every day of creation between Adam and Eve or between them ad God. I think we are not given the information about whether or not Eve had kids prior to the Fall because it is not important to the overall story God is trying to tell.
Easy answer: I don't think it matters if Eve had children before she left the Garden of Eden. But I do know that she was to be "fruitful and multiply". It was always God's idea to have more of everything good.
paul thieman
I believe that God would have made things clear with understanding if
it is important, we should not take away or add things to God's written
word.
Ruth Deatley
I believe that when God told Eve that childbirth would be more painful that tells me that she had already had children and it wasn't painful until after the fall. Cain therefore had sexual relations with the offspring of Adam and Eve to replenish the earth.
Amy Washington
Perhaps there were children born to Adam and Eve prior to the fall in accordance with God’s command to be fruitful and multiply. They then would NOT have been tainted by the same sin born into the rest of us following the fall. Perhaps then those offspring account for the “Sons of God” and “Nephilim” mentioned in Genesis 6... upon leaving the garden to venture in the world they saw the “daughters of men” (born with a sinful nature) as beautiful and took them as wives. Following that God saw that ALL offspring of men would be continually turned toward sin and so decided to eliminate mankind from the planet through the flood...
This would also go along with later verses that state clearly that ALL mankind is descended from Adam.
Dale Meyer
Amy Washington's comment is very much worth considering. Here is something else that connects. The first command God gave to man is found in Gen 1:28 where God told man to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it (the woman did not yet have a name; the humans were adam. If adam failed to be fruitful and multiply etc. that would have been the first sin. Gen 2:15 says the job of the man adam was to dress and keep the garden, which couldn't be done if he left it in order fill and subdue the earth. The children of the man and woman adam were the ones who were supposed to fill and subdue the earth. The job of gardener was already filled, and that was not the children's job. They could not stay in the garden. So pre-sin children of the man and woman would have populated the earth to some extent, and then the fall happened back home in the Garden. All of the earth was dragged down by the curse, including the pre-sin children. So here is the big question: Romans 5:14 states "Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come." Who is being referred to by "even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression..? Pre-sin chidren? Amy's idea about "Sons of God" and "Nephilim" I think has merit. By the way a good friend of mine, MTh, Semitic language scholar doesn't like this b/c violates federal headship of adam.