Yada is the Hebrew verb for knowing, and the knowing it describes is not cognitive. When Genesis 4:1 says "Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived," the same verb is doing the work it does when God says to Jeremiah, "before I formed you in the womb I knew you." This is not acquaintance. It is not data. It is covenant intimacy: the exclusive, embodied, relational knowledge that only exists inside a binding relationship between two parties who have chosen each other.

BDB opens the entry with "to know," but the semantic range stretches across perception, recognition, and covenant relationship, with the covenant sense dominating in prophetic and priestly texts. Amos 3:2 is blunt: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth." Not "you are the only ones I am aware of." "You are the only people I am in covenant with." HaShem knew every nation. He was in covenant with Israel.

When Yeshua says in Matthew 7:23 "I never knew you, depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness," the Greek behind it is ouk egnon hymas, and the register standing behind the Greek is the Hebrew yada. He is not saying He never met them. He is saying they were never in covenant with each other. They used His name. They performed religious activity around Him. They were strangers to Him in the way Adam was not a stranger to Eve. You can prophesy in the Name and not be yada of the Named One. That is the warning the whole verse carries, and it only lands when the Hebrew register behind the Greek is kept visible.