How Long were Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden? (Conclusion)
As I re-reread my post How Long were Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden? (Part 3) - When Men Began to Call on the Name of the Lord, I remembered the verse Genesis 4:13…
 13 Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear. 14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”
This contains some more clues about whether Cain interacted with descendants of Adam, or the people from whom Adam was descended.
First Cain is worried about who would find him, and that whoever finds him will kill him. Why? I can think of two reasons: either the people outside “the land” were savages who kill any stranger, or they were descendants of Adam who would realize Cain killed Abel and would kill him. Which is it?
Looking at God’s response may contain a clue:
 15 But the LORD said to him, “Not so ; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him.
Who is more likely to respond to mark on Cain’s head? Savages or rational people? In my opinion, rational people. Why? Because they would have been the people descended from Adam and Eve, and would have known the stories of what happened nearly 100 years before. Those stories would have provided context for understanding the significance of Cain’s mark.
Also, it does not make sense that Cain would expect to wonder outside “the land” and still be found by people who would kill him, unless the land he was talking about was rather small, and the people alive from Adam and Eve were somewhat spread out around it, but aware of each other, and not organized. It would explain to me how Cain could proceed as he did:
 17 Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch.
Having a son caused him to settle. But, recall God’s curse:
11 Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.
After some time of wondering around, scrounging for food, maybe working for it, perhaps people realizing that no ground worked by Cain would yield anything, Cain realized the only way to eat and provide for his family was to work for him. But, why would they? Perhaps they feared his mark. Why? Because death of the ground followed him, as did the fear of bodily death for anyone who would kill him. And if people were not subjecting themselves to God, they just might subject themselves to a man cursed by God.
So, it would seem to me that Adam and Eve were more likely to have left the garden when Adam was 32, and that he had 20,000 descendants by the time Seth was born; it seems more likely than Adam and Eve leaving the Garden after 100 years, and having only three children (Cain, Abel, and Seth). The shorter stay in Eden provides Adam with ample time to understand the world beyond him, discover need for a helper, and live with his partner, before sinning. It provides enough time to have ample descendents for Cain marry from, be concerned for his life, and build a city with and for. It provides a small enough population to be destroyed by a local flood, a population that would seem to Seth’s descendents like it constitutes the entire world. (I will study more on this in the near future I suspect) Finally, the numbers are numerically appealing from a Biblical Perspective:
- 18 years - Time before God gave Adam “life” (18 means “alive” or “to life!”)
- 7 years - Time Adam cared for the garden “alone”, named animals as he tried using them to help (7 is number of completion)
- 7 years - Time Adam cared for the garden with Eve
- 98 years - Time until Seth was born (98 = 7*7 + 7*7 = (7+7)*7… It was Seth who would first call on God’s name)
According to Wikipedia, in Judaism, 7 is “a highly symbolic number in the Torah, alluding to the infusion of spirituality and Godliness into the creation.” Wouldn’t you say that’s a great description of the potential impact of having mankind start calling on the name of the Lord? Of course, by the flood, only Noah was still doing calling on God’s name, but it was through Noah that God would have followers later on.
I would say that Seth’s giving birth to Enosh was therefore a type of Christ. When Christ was born, it was an infusion of “spirituality and Godliness into the creation.” When Christ would later be baptized, modeling the symbolism of rebirth, people would actually get to see that infusion multiply. The birth of Enosh, and Seth’s calling on God was akin to Christ’s birth… Noah emerging from the flood was akin to Christ’s later emergence from the Nile in baptism.
I love it!