Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Genesis 10:25
In his days was the earth divided. His name, Peleg, means division.
Genesis 10:25, in every translation this tool compares.
Imagine a chronicle naming a child Splitter the same year a kingdom splits in two, and stating outright that the timing is the point. Genesis does this routinely, and English transliteration, Peleg as a bare name, hides the built-in explanation every time.
Because the name given to mark a moment of global division is built on the exact Hebrew verb for dividing, another instance of Genesis explaining an event by naming a person after it, the same device already used for Cain, Noah, and Japheth.
Every version reads Peleg as a name and divided as a separate statement, correctly, but with no way to show an English reader that the name itself is the Hebrew word for divided.
פֶּלֶג Peleg (פָּלַג palag, to divide) · H6389
Peleg is built directly on the verb palag, to divide or split, the same root behind the noun for a water channel or stream at Psalm 1:3 and Job 38:25, and behind the request confuse, divide their tongues at Psalm 55:9, itself a probable echo of the Babel story two verses later in Genesis. What exactly divided in Peleg's days, the population by language at Babel, or a more literal geological or geographic division, is debated, but the naming device itself is the same one Genesis has already used three times before this chapter.
English Peleg is a bare proper name carrying no built-in meaning, so the sentence in his days was the earth divided reads as a coincidence of timing rather than as the name itself supplying the explanation, which is how the Hebrew presents it.
When Genesis names a person immediately before or after describing a major event, assume the name is doing explanatory work until proven otherwise; this book uses that device more often than any other in the Hebrew Bible.
Every version simply transliterates Peleg as a name, with no dispute about that. What exactly was divided, languages at Babel or something more literal and geographic, is a separate and genuinely open question the naming pun itself does not settle.
- palag as divide, used of water channels: Psalm 1:3; Job 38:25
- The same root requested of God at Psalm 55:9, 'confuse, divide their tongues,' likely echoing Babel
