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CR18Day_05 @ nkjv@Genesis:10 @ RandyP comments: This is now the second re-population of Genesis, first being the more controversial from Adam and Eve. Critics often ask "where did Cain and Seth get their wives"? The answer most likely is that they were sisters, but it doesn't have to stop there. Genesis was written not as an overall history as much as it was of all redemptive history (the details that would be important to our understanding of God's redemption). Seth and Cain's brothers and sisters are unnamed and unnumbered. Over the course of nine hundred plus years Eve surely bore Adam many. Those children married and had children. Those children bore many children. It could be that Cain and Seth married nieces or even grand nieces. While Cain was the first child, neither Able nor Seth necessarily have to be second and third if we are to look at the narrative as a redemptive history. In this passage we are back down to eight persons starting all over again. In both passages we can see how quickly the multiplication of being fruitful adds up.

CR18Day_19 @ nkjv@Genesis:37 @ RandyP comments: I think we should spend a moment in this new developing storyline of Joseph discussing the obvious dangers of polygamy. We have seen this danger with sons of different women Isaac and Ishmael. We have seen it now with the twelve sons of Jacob. We sense it heightened now that Rachel is not there to fend for her two sons especially the elder Joseph. In part Jacob's love for Joseph comes out of his love and mourning for Rachel. Jacob you'll remember was tricked by Laban into this polygamy it was Rachel that he wanted only and first. The problem we can observe is rooted in who the man loves more. This is true among the wives. This is true among the children. It puts the man in an impossible spot being that he may or may not have any leaning of affection one way or the other, if he does it may or may not be anything his heart has any control over. Though he might do all that he sees possible to make things equal there is little that he can do to alter the perceptions of the others once those perceptions have rooted. Many a polygamist man is trapped into a life of saying what he doesn't mean, expressing what he doesn't rightly feel, and making apology for it at every twisting bend. If that becomes true for the man of the house, think what that means to the wife or child that is perceived to be his favored object. Think how the other wives/siblings amongst themselves can work their unfettered perceptions into a greasy and consuming froth. Polygamy has been tolerated in the past by God, but it has never HIS sanctioned preference.