Peleg

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Peleg (Hebrew: פֶּלֶג / פָּלֶג, Standard Péleg / Páleg Tiberian Péleḡ / Pāleḡ ; "Division") is one of the two sons of Eber, the eponymous ancestor of the Hebrews, mentioned in the so-called "Table of Nations" in Genesis x, xi and 1 Chronicles i. According to Genesis 10:25, it was during the time of Peleg that "the earth was divided", after the failure of Nimrod's Tower of Babel. Peleg's son was Reu, born when he was thirty. He lived to the age of 239. The meaning of the earth being divided has been speculated to be either a literal division of the continents (as from the super-continent Pangaea), a drowning of the continental shelf that created many of the current archipelagos and divided the major landmass, or a patriarchal division of the eastern hemisphere (Europe, Asia and Africa) among the three sons of Noah for future occupation. Flavius Josephus affirms the latter interpretation in his Antiquities of the Jews, Book I, Chapter VI, Paragraph 4.

The descendants of Eber have a much shorter lifetime than the descendants of Noah and Shem before Eber, indicating that possibility that after the flood, Earth's environment had another major changes that again reduces the lifetime of humans.

Peleg is also the name of one of the owners of the Pequod in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.