Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“Eber lived thirty-four years, and became the father of Peleg. Eber lived four hundred thirty years after he became the father of Peleg, and became the father of more sons and daughters.”
(Genesis 11:16-17)

Eber almost saw the birth of Joseph (assuming they lived in the same area). He died only twelve (12) years before Joseph was born.

Peleg is an interesting name. It means earthquake or divided. Some believe that in his lifetime there was a massive earthquake – a world-shaking event. But most – because of the language of Genesis 10:25 believe that it was during Peleg’s lifetime that the Tower of Babel incident happened. That he was named division or dispersed because this was the year in which the people of the world were dispersed by language into separate culture groups.

The sage Da’at Zekenim writes: ‘פלג. “Peleg.” Rabbi Joseph Kara explains the reason why this son of Ever was called peleg, “division, segment,” was because in his time when the Tower was built and destroyed, the language of mankind, which as the Torah had reported (Genesis 11,1) was uniform and the basis of their unity, was interfered with by G–d, so that eventually there were 70 nations each with a language all their own. At the same time generation after generation man’s lifespan also became drastically shortened. At the time when Peleg was born it had shrunk to about 300 years.’