On more than one list of “Bible discrepancies” is the allegation that Bible writers erred in their teachings about incest. In Leviticus 18:6-30, 20:11-12, and Deuteronomy 27:20-23, one learns that sexual relations between close family members is sinful and punishable by death: “None of you shall approach anyone who is near of kin to him, to uncover his nakedness” (Leviticus 18:6). Other passages, however, indicate that God tolerated incest among His people, and even blessed those involved in such relationships. Abraham married Sarah, his half-sister (Genesis 20:12; cf. Genesis 17:15-16; 22:17), while Abraham’s son, Isaac, married Rebekah, his second cousin (Genesis 22:20-23; 24:4,15), and Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, married his first cousins, Rachel and Leah (Genesis 24:29; 29:15-30). Even Moses’ father, Amram, “took for himself Jachebed, his father’s sister, as wife” (Exodus 6:20, emp. added; cf. Leviticus 20:19). Critics claim that such passages are contradictory. Were Bible writers really inconsistent when they addressed the subject of incest?

First, one must recognize that simply because Scripture mentions godly men such as Abraham or one of his righteous descendants doing something God forbade elsewhere, does not mean the Bible writers contradicted themselves. Christ was the only perfect man ever to live (2 Corinthians 5:21). Though Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc. were counted faithful to God (Hebrews 11:7-29), they occasionally disobeyed His will (e.g., Numbers 20:1-12). God never blessed their disobedience, only their faithfulness. Consider the harlot Rahab. Whereas God did not condone her harlotry, she was “justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way” (James 2:25). “By faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe, when she had received the spies with peace” (Hebrews 11:32). Simply because God graciously saved Rahab from the destruction of Jericho, does not mean that God condoned her past sexual sins. Similarly, just because the Bible writers mention a particular event (e.g., Amram marrying his aunt) without condemning it, does not necessarily mean the Bible writers condoned it.

Second, for one to identify a legitimate contradiction, he must be considering the same time frame. To condemn Thomas Jefferson for not paying Federal income tax would be inappropriate because there was no Federal income tax in the United States during his lifetime. Likewise, to accuse certain righteous men of breaking God’s law prior to the establishment of that law is equally erroneous. The first indication of God forbidding incestuous marriages is not until after the Israelites departed Egypt (when Moses was already 80 years old—Exodus 7:7). Prior to Mosaic Law, men could lawfully marry close family members. Indeed, God blessed Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3) while he was married to Sarah, his half-sister. What’s more, implied in the creation of Adam, the first man (1 Corinthians 15:45), and Eve, “the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20), is that their immediate offspring married each other and had children. Furthermore, following the great Flood, the entire Earth was repopulated by Noah, his three sons, and their wives (Genesis 9:1). Thus, in the beginning God allowed incest.

> 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….[N]o harmful genetic traits had emerged at this point that could have been expressed in the children of closely related partners. However, after many generations, and especially after the Noahic Flood (Genesis 6-9), solar and cosmic radiation, chemical and viral mutagens, and DNA replication errors, led to the multiplication of genetic disorders. God protected His people by instituting strict laws against incestuous marriages in the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus (Thompson and Major, 1987, 7[2]:7).

Laws regarding incest were given only during the Mosaic dispensation. Those living prior to this period or since this age ended (Colossians 2:14) have not been bound by its laws on incest anymore than we are bound by other Mosaic mandates (e.g., refraining from eating pork—Leviticus 11:7). That said, since “more genetic disorders have arisen in the world population since the time of Moses,…it is even more important to avoid marrying a close relative. Christianity thus far has insured that such rules have been carried forward into modern laws in the western world” (Thompson and Major, 7[2]:7). Though it may not be sinful for you to marry your first cousin, you may need to think twice before saying, “I do.”

REFERENCE
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Thompson, Bert and Trevor Major (1987), “Where Did Cain Get His Wife?” Reason and Revelation, 7[2]:5-7, February.

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Genesis 20:11–12

And Abraham said, “Because I thought, surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will kill me on account of my wife. But indeed she is truly my sister. She is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife.
Deuteronomy 27:22

‘Cursed is the one who lies with his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’ [Also see Leviticus 18:6–9.]

These two passages, to some, present quite a contradiction. Genesis tells us that Abraham, a man blessed by God, married his half-sister, while Moses in Deuteronomy tells the Israelites that anyone who lies with his sister shall be cursed. So, is this a contradiction in the Bible? Not at all!

To understand why, we need to start at the beginning with Adam and Eve. We don’t know how many children Adam and Eve had, but the Bible makes it clear that they had other “sons and daughters” in addition to Abel, Cain, and Seth (Genesis 5:4). So, for the human population to increase, and for them to be obedient to God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, brother and sister had to get married. There were no others around! But doesn’t this violate God’s commands that prohibit close relations marrying? Certainly not.

We need to keep in mind that the Law of Moses wasn’t given until around 1440 BC, more than 2,500 years after creation and more than 400 years after Abraham’s time. So, why did God institute laws against marrying close relatives? The following section from the chapter “Cain’s Wife” in The New Answers Book explains why:

The more closely related two people are, the more likely it is that they will have similar mistakes in their genes, inherited from the same parents. Therefore, brother and sister are likely to have similar mistakes in their genetic material. If there were to be a union between these two that produces offspring, children would inherit one set of genes from each of their parents. Because the genes probably have similar mistakes, the mistakes pair together and result in deformities in the children.

. . . However, this fact of present-day life did not apply to Adam and Eve. When the first two people were created, they were perfect. Everything God made was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). That means their genes were perfect—no mistakes. But when sin entered the world because of Adam (Genesis 3:6), God cursed the world so that the perfect creation then began to degenerate, that is, suffer death and decay (Romans 8:22). Over a long period of time, this degeneration would have resulted in all sorts of mistakes occurring in the genetic material of living things.

. . . By the time of Moses (about 2,500 years later), degenerative mistakes would have accumulated to such an extent in the human race that it would have been necessary for God to bring in the laws forbidding brother-sister (and close relative) marriage (Leviticus 18–20).

So, once again, we see that there are no contradictions in the Scriptures when we take the time to study them in their proper historical and theological context.