Verse 23. — If thou shalt return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up, and thou shalt put iniquity far from thy tabernacle. He who returns to God after sins is cleansed in thought and in deed. — Heretics think that the faithful people have departed from God, because they see them resisting their preachings. And when they behold them afflicted with present evils, they try, as if by admonition, to draw them to the grace of the Creator, saying: If thou shalt return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up. As if they plainly said: Because by resisting our dogmas thou hast departed from the Lord, therefore thou art pulled down from the building of righteousness.
But by 'tabernacle' we sometimes take the dwelling of the body, and sometimes the dwelling of the heart. For just as we dwell as a soul in the body, so through our thoughts we dwell in the mind. Iniquity, therefore, in the tabernacle of the mind is a perverse intention in the pursuit of thought; but iniquity in the tabernacle of the body is a carnal act through the completion of the deed. And so Eliphaz, because he was a friend of the blessed man, perceiving certain true things, and yet, in those matters in which he deviated from rectitude, holding the likeness of heretics, believed that blessed Job — scourged out of his virtues — had gone astray without knowing it; and, seeing him struck down, he makes him a promise, if he shall return to the Almighty, saying:
Thou shalt put iniquity far from thy tabernacle, as if he openly said: Whosoever returns to God after his errors, is cleansed alike in thought and in deed. There follows: