Antenantiosis is a figure of speech used here and other places in the Book of Mormon (see Mosiah 2:9; Alma 12:14; 30:21; 34:39; 46:30; 50:27 etc.). “It is the practice of stating a proposition in terms of its opposite [‘Limhi was desirous that his father should not be destroyed’]. The result is to express the positive in a very high degree, or as the biblical scholar E. W. Bullinger puts it, ‘We thus emphasize that which we seem to lessen.’ …
“It is an interesting figure of speech, … that helps illuminate the forceful effectiveness of many of the prophetic messages of the Book of Mormon” (Call, “Antenantiosis in the Book of Mormon,” 96–97).