Not giving heed to Jewish fables. — Such as we now find embodied in the Talmud. (See Note on 1 Timothy 1:4.) The oral law and traditional interpretations and glosses had, to a great measure, obscured the original simple text. The Israelite of the time of St. Paul, trained in the stricter Jewish schools, was taught that the way to win the approval of the Most High was through the observance of countless ceremonies and the practice of an elaborate ritual.
And commandments of men. — The nature of these commandments we gather from the words of the next (the 15th) verse. They seem to have been on the subject of abstinence from meats and from other things created by God for the use and enjoyment of man. The directions of St. Paul here are, in spirit, in exact accordance with the Lord’s teaching at Jerusalem, related in Matthew 15:1-9. St. Paul’s dread of this kind of asceticism and of the peculiar school of teaching, then so popular among the Jews, which enjoined an elaborate system of ritual and observance, which pronounced meritorious in the sight of the Eternal the practice of rites and ceremonies minute and trifling, was grounded upon a fear — too often, alas, verified — lest with the observance of the ritual, and the careful practice of the ceremonies and rites, the moral law should be lost sight of. With this school a holy life consisted rather in observing carefully a ritual, than in living justly, nobly, generously.