Genesis 44:13 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Rent their clothes— Loniginus lays it down in his Treatise on the Sublime, that one of the first means to attain it, is an accurate and judicious choice of the most suitable circumstances. We cannot have a higher instance of this excellence, than in that striking circumstance in the present narration, which fills the mind with a vast series of ideas: they rent their clothes, says Moses, by which single expression he paints their anguish and confusion, in more lively colours than could have been done by an enumeration of every circumstance indicating grief.