Let me alone two months. — There was nothing which forbade this postponement for a definite purpose and period of the fulfilment of the vow. For the phrase “let me alone,” see Deuteronomy 9:14; 1 Samuel 11:3.
And bewail my virginity. — The thought which was so grievous to the Hebrew maiden was not death, but to die unwedded and childless. This is the bitterest wail of Antigone also, in the great play of Sophocles (Ant. 890); but to a Hebrew maid the pang would be more bitter, because the absence of motherhood cut off from her, and, in this instance, from her house, the hopes which prophecy had cherished. Josephus makes the expression mean no more than “to bewail her youth,” neoteta (Jos. Antt. v. 7, § 10).