What Does Genesis 11:16 Mean?
And Eber lived four and thirty years, and brought forth Peleg.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg:THE KEY
Eber, whose name carries crossing, begets Peleg, whose name carries division: the line itself binds passage to rupture.
THE MEANING
This line holds two movements together: Eber carries the language of crossing, while Peleg carries the language of division. Passage and fracture both belong to the living shape of this genealogy; neither erases the other.
THE ROOT
עֵבֶר
ʿĒḇer
GROWS FROM
עבר
To cross over, pass through, or move across.
Eber’s name carries the root of crossing a boundary. English leaves the name opaque, but the same crossing-language appears when Abram passes through the land.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāḇar: To cross, pass over, or pass through.
עָבַר
This verb makes the movement inside Eber’s name visible: crossing is a passage across a boundary.
ʿiḇrî: Hebrew; one associated with the other side or with crossing over.
עִבְרִי
The related name for a Hebrew person carries the same across-the-boundary language.
maʿăḇār: Passage, crossing, or ford.
מַעֲבָר
The root also names the place or way by which a crossing happens.
פֶּלֶג
Peleg
GROWS FROM
פלג
To divide or split.
Peleg’s name carries the root of division, and Genesis 10:25 uses that same root when it says the earth was divided. The related noun can also mean a stream or channel, a formed course through a larger flow.
ALSO GROWS
yippālēg: Will be divided or split.
יִפָּלֵג
This form appears in the explanation of Peleg’s name in Genesis 10:25, making the name’s root explicit.
peleg: A stream, channel, or watercourse.
פֶּלֶג
The root’s concrete branch suggests division shaped into a channel or course.
THE PATTERN
Crossing marks movement through a real boundary, with the passage itself remaining part of the story.
And Abram crossed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. The Canaanite was then in the land.And the priests who lifted the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood steady on dry ground in the midst of Jordan, and all the Israelites crossed over on dry ground, until all the people had finished crossing over Jordan.By trust they stepped across the Red Sea as over dry land, which the Egyptians, making the attempt, were swallowed down.THE THREAD
To Eber were born two sons; the name of the one was Peleg, the splitting, for in his days the earth was split; and the name of his brother was Joktan.Genesis 10:25 directly unpacks Peleg: ‘divided’ uses the same פלג (p-l-g, divide) root carried in פֶּלֶג (Peleg). The name pair puts crossing and division into one family line.
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