My observation this time is very brief. What does Genesis 10:25 mean when it says that Peleg was so named because in his day the earth (ha-aretz) was divided (nifelegah, from the verb root plg)? To some, the answer might be obvious, but others may have heard various alternative answers, such as the view (which I heard years ago) that it refers to the physical separation of the original continents (though technically this happened quite a bit before humans).
The context supplies what is probably the best answer. The following context narrates how God scattered the peoples and confused their languages (Genesis 11:1-9). Although that narrative concerning the tower of Babel does not use the same term for dividing, the term probably functions is a functional synonym for the one used for God confusing the languages there (cf. plg applied to languages or speech in Ps 55:9 [MT 55:10]). Ha-aretz often means “the land” or even “the people of the land”; here God scatters the people and so divides the earth.
Why did God scatter the peoples? I’ll turn to that subject in a slightly longer way in the next post.
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