  The statistical distribution of the radial pairwise peculiar velocity of
galaxies is known to have an exponential form as implied by observations and
explicitly shown in N-body simulations. Here we calculate its statistical
distribution function using the Zel'dovich approximation assuming that the
primordial density fluctuations are Gaussian distributed. We show that the
exponential distribution is realized as a transient phenomena on megaparsec
scales in the standard cold-dark-matter model.
