‘ And she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me, let me alone two months that I may depart and go down on the mountains and bewail my virginity, I and my companions.'
From now on she was to be a perpetual virgin. Like Samuel after her she was sanctified to Yahweh by her parent's oath ‘all the days of her life' (1 Samuel 1:11). To a woman of Israel childbearing was everything. Yet for her this was to be denied. What she asked was that she might have two months to prepare herself for her new vocation and to get herself used to her new calling, to bewail the fact that she would never be a mother. And she went with her companions as though she were preparing for her wedding.
And in this preparation she went into the mountains. She knew that this was where Abraham had gone to ‘sanctify' his son (Genesis 22). She knew that this was where Moses had gone to meet and commune with Yahweh. Thus she herself would go into the mountains to make her peace with Yahweh, for there was nowhere else that she could go. But it would not have been seemly, or wise, for her to go alone. ‘Go down on the mountains' may indicate her desire to abase herself before God.