Word studies · Hebrew · Strong's H3045
יָדַע · yâdaʻ · appears 945 times in the Old Testament
In one line: Knowing God personally, not just knowing about Him.
No longer will each man teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.”
Jeremiah 31:34
Yada is to know — knowledge by experience and relationship, not merely by information.
Yada covers knowing facts, knowing a person, and knowing God, and it stretches to the intimacy of marriage and to God's covenant knowledge of His people. When God says of Israel, “you only have I known of all the families of the earth,” He is speaking of chosen relationship rather than data.
Yada's basic sense is to ascertain by seeing, and Hebrew extends it across the whole range of acquaintance — observation, care, recognition, and intimacy. Its breadth is the point: Hebrew does not divide knowing about from knowing.
Modern knowledge is information you can hold at a distance; yada implicates you in what you know. That is why Hosea can say “let us press on to know the LORD” as a call to relationship, and why the same verb describes the union of husband and wife.
Yada (H3045) appears 860 times in the Hebrew Bible — one of its most common verbs — and Genesis 4:1 uses it for the intimacy of husband and wife.
Making knowledge relational sets the goal of revelation: God gives Himself to be known, not merely studied. The new covenant promise is precisely this — “they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”
Move one thing you know about God into something you know of Him — take a truth you can state and pray it back until it is personal. Information becomes acquaintance only through use.
to know (properly, to ascertain by seeing); used in a great variety of senses, figuratively, literally, euphemistically and inferentially (including observation, care, recognition; and causatively, instruction, designation, punishment, etc.)
“For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Genesis 3:5Then a new king, who did not know Joseph, came to power in Egypt.
Exodus 1:8when they become aware of the sin they have committed, then the assembly must bring a young bull as a sin offering and present it before the Tent of Meeting.
Leviticus 4:14“Please do not leave us,” Moses said, “since you know where we should camp in the wilderness, and you can serve as our eyes.
Numbers 10:31Choose for yourselves wise, understanding, and respected men from each of your tribes, and I will appoint them as your leaders.”
Deuteronomy 1:13But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. So she said, “Yes, the men did come to me, but I did not know where they had come from.
Joshua 2:4Press and hold know in any chapter and this study opens on the verse you are reading, with the lexicons, every occurrence and the commentaries beside it. The Bible is free to read.
Scripture quoted from the Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Strong's definitions are public domain. Counts come from The Pillar's own tagged text.