Judges 19:23

Do not this folly. — It is from no deficiency of moral indignation that the word “folly” (nebalah) is used. Sometimes when crime is too dark and deadly for ordinary reproach the feelings are more deeply expressed by using a milder word, which is instantly corrected and intensified by the hearer himself. (See Genesis 34:7; Deuteronomy 22:21.) Thus Virgil merely gives the epithet “unpraised” (“illaudati Busiridis aras”) to the cannibal tyrant, which serves even better than a stronger word. (Comp. “Shall I praise you for these things? I praise you not” 1 Corinthians 11:17.) (See the author’s Brief Greek Syntax, p. 199.) This figure of speech takes the various form of antiphasis, litotes, meiosis, &c.