I cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine;... I cannot take thy hand; that too is flesh, And in the flesh thou hast sinned; and mine own flesh, Here looking down on thine polluted, cries 'I loathe thee'; yet not less, O Guinevere, For I was ever virgin save for thee, My love thro' flesh hath wrought into my life So far, that my doom is, I love thee still. Let no man dream but that I love thee still. Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul, And so thou lean on our fair father Christ, Hereafter in that world where all are pure We two may meet before high God, and thou Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know I am thine husband, not a smaller soul.... Leave me that, I charge thee, my last hope. Now must I hence, Thro' the thick night I hear the trumpet blow." FOOTNOTES: [450] ii. 23, Heb. [451] ii. 20, Heb. [452] vi. 3, 4; vii. 8; ix. 10; xiv. 6, 7, 8. [453] vii. 11, 12; x. 11; xi. 4, etc. [454] Pregnant construction, _hath committed great harlotry from after Jehovah_. [455] These personal names do not elsewhere occur. גֹּמֶר; Γομερ. דִּבְלַיִם; Δεβηλαιμ B; Δεβηλαειμ, AQ. They have, of course, been interpreted allegorically in the interests of the theory discussed below. גמר has been taken to mean "completion," and interpreted as various derivatives of that root: Jerome, "the perfect one"; Raschi, "that fulfilled all evil"; Kimchi, "fulfilment of punishment"; Calvin, "consumptio," and so on. דבלים has been traced to דִּבלה, Pl. דִּבְלִים, cakes of pressed figs, as if a name had been sought to connect the woman at once with the idol-worship and a rich sweetness; or to an Arabic root, דבל, to press, as if it referred either to the plumpness of the body (cf. Ezek. xvi. 7; so Hitzig) or to the woman's habits. But all these are far-fetched and vain. There is no reason to suppose that either of the two names is symbolic. The alternative (allowed by the language) naturally suggests itself that דבלים is the name of Gomer's birthplace. But there is nothing to prove this. No such place-name occurs elsewhere: one cannot adduce the Diblathaim in Moab (Num. xxxiii. 46 ff.; Jer. xlviii. 2). [456] _Hist. Geog._, Chap. XVIII. [457] רֻחָמָה לֹא, probably 3rd pers. sing. fem. Pual (in Pause cf. Prov. xxviii. 13); literally, _She is not loved_ or _pitied_. The word means love as pity: "such pity as a father hath unto his children dear" (Psalm ciii.), or God to a penitent man (Psalm xxviii. 13). The Greek versions alternate between love and pity. LXX. οὐκ ἠλεημένη διότι οὐ μὴ προσθήσω ἔτι ἠλεῆσαι, for which the Complutensian has ἀγαπῆσαι, the reading followed by Paul (Rom. ix, 25: cf. 1 Peter ii. 10). [458] Here ver. 7 is to be omitted, as explained above, p. 213.