What Does Job 31:17 Mean in the King James?
Or have eaten my morsel myself alone, and the fatherless hath not eaten thereof;
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The verse sets eating “alone” beside a fatherless person who gets no share, making the boundary around one person’s meal visible as another person’s exclusion.
THE MEANING
A private meal and the fatherless person’s lack sit in the same sentence: one eats while the other does not eat from that provision. The verse makes the distance between having food and receiving nourishment visible now, wherever one person’s table and another person’s need meet.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that another person’s exclusion from your provision has nothing to do with your own integrity.
THE ROOT
אָכַל
’ākal
GROWS FROM
אכל
To eat or consume.
“eaten” in this verse is ’ākal. The Hebrew uses the אכל root for both Job’s eating and the fatherless person’s not eating. It holds the two outcomes in one action: the same provision reaches one person and fails to reach the other.
ALSO GROWS
’ākal: To eat or consume.
אָכַל
Job’s eating and the fatherless person’s lack of eating are framed as opposite outcomes of the same action.
’ōkhel: Food, that which is eaten.
אֹכֶל
This related form joins the act of eating to its provision, keeping the question of who receives nourishment in view.
לְבַדִּי
levaddî
GROWS FROM
בדד
To be separate, isolated, or alone.
The verse’s לְבַדִּי (levaddî, “by myself”) places separation around the meal before it names the fatherless person’s exclusion. One person is alone by choice; the other is left outside the eating.
ALSO GROWS
bādād: Alone or isolated.
בָּדָד
It carries the sense of being set apart that shapes Job’s description of eating by himself.
levad: By oneself, apart from others.
לְבַד
This related form appears in the verse’s description of the meal as Job’s solitary act.
יָתוֹם
yātôm
GROWS FROM
יתם
To be orphaned or deprived of a father.
The word names a person through a specific absence: the fatherless person. The verse brings that relational vulnerability directly beside the question of whether food reaches them.
ALSO GROWS
yātôm: An orphan or fatherless person.
יָתוֹם
This is the person whose share of the meal is at issue in the verse.
yĕtômîm: Orphans or fatherless people.
יְתוֹמִים
The plural form shows the same word family naming those who depend on others for a place and provision.
THE PATTERN
Provision is shown as shared when people exposed to need are included in its distribution.
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?THE THREAD
And the Levite, (because he hath no part nor inheritance with thee,) and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest.Job’s יָתוֹם (yātôm, “fatherless person”) appears here beside אָכַל (’ākal, “eat”), the same root used for eating in both verses. Deuteronomy pictures the fatherless coming to eat and be satisfied, the included meal that Job’s sentence measures against eating alone.
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