Or have eaten my morsel myself alone— This is agreeable to the early ideas of hospitality, and is as strong an expression of benevolence as can be conceived. The Arabs practise it to this very day in its greatest extent. On a journey, after they have prepared their food, they go to the highest ground in the neighbourhood, and call out thrice with a loud voice to all their brethren, the sons of the faithful, to come and partake of it: Dr. Shaw tells us, that they did so when he travelled in that country, though none of those brethren were in view, or perhaps within a hundred miles of them. This custom, however, they maintain to be a token at least of their great benevolence, as indeed it would have been of their hospitality, provided they had had an opportunity to have shewn it. See the Preface to his Travels, p. 12. Schultens observes, very agreeably, that this verse affords us a beautiful picture of liberality and tender charity; which would not suffer Job to eat even the least morsel of bread without imparting some little portion to the poor and needy.
Related Commentaries of Job 31:17
Job 31:17
17 Or have eaten my morsel myself alone, and the fatherless hath not eaten thereof;