Person · 1757–1996 AM · 2004 BCE — 1765 BCE
Peleg פֶּלֶג
"in his days the earth was divided"
The Torah explains his name itself: "the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided" (Bereshit 10:25). Peleg is from the root of splitting.
He is the first in this line to live less than three hundred years: two hundred and thirty-nine, against four hundred and more for his father and grandfather. The break is visible in the figures, and it falls on exactly the generation of which it is said that the earth was divided.
He died in 1996, and on that same year this timeline places the Tower of Babel, the confusion of tongues and the furnace of Ur Kasdim. The count from the verses and the dating of the event met on their own.
On the timeline
1658 · 2103 BCEThe Line of Shem: Arpachshad, Ever, Peleg and the Division of the Earth1657 · 2104 BCEThe Sons of Noah and the Spread of the Nations
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Bereshit 11:10–26 — the ten generations from Shem to Abraham: age at each son's birth and the years lived after
- I Chronicles 1:17–27 — the same line from Shem to Abram, repeated in the Writings
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.