Peleg

AI summary: Peleg matters because the cross references present him as a marked figure in Genesis' account of the world's early ordering after Babel. His name is tied to division, and though the narrative does not elaborate, that note gives his generation interpretive significance within the spread of peoples. He also stands in the line carefully preserved through Chronicles and Luke. Taken together, the material presents Peleg as an early patriarch whose name symbolizes division while his lineage carries the story toward the patriarchs.¹

Division, one of the sons of Eber; so called because “in his days was the earth divided” (Gen. 10:25). Possibly he may have lived at the time of the dispersion from Babel. But more probably the reference is to the dispersion of the two races which sprang from Eber, the one spreading towards Mesopotamia and Syria, and the other southward into Arabia. ³