1 Timothy 1:7

Verse 7. Teachers of the law] To be esteemed or celebrated as rabbins; to be reputed cunning in solving knotty questions and enigmas, which answered no end to true religion. Of such the rabbinical teaching was full.

Understanding neither what they say] This is evident from almost all the Jewish comments which yet remain. Things are asserted which are either false or dubious; words, the import of which they did not understand, were brought to illustrate them: so that it may be said, They understand not what they say, nor whereof they affirm. I will give one instance from the Jerusalem Targum, on Genesis 1:15: And God made two great lights, and they were equal in splendour twenty-one years, the six hundred and seventy-second part of an hour excepted: and afterwards the moon brought a false accusation against the sun, and therefore she was lessened; and God made the sun the greater light to superintend the day, c. I could produce a thousand of a similar complexion.