HEBREW WORD STUDY – TO KNOW – YADA’ ידע Yod Daleth Ayin

Psalms 139:23: “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me and know my thoughts:

Genesis 4:1: “And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.”

The same Hebrew word for David asking God to know his heart and thoughts is the same word used for Adam knowing Eve resulting in the conception of Cain. Obvious Cain was not the result in Adam having some hidden knowledge of Eve. There had to be some physical involvement. Cain was not voted into existence. Why does Scripture use a word which refers to a mental act rather than a physical act to explain Adam’s involvement in the conception of Cain? Was Scripture trying to come up with an inoffensive word for a sexual relationship?

Clearly, we find again a Hebrew word which suggests a certain focus. In our Western culture we speak of sexual intercourse as purely a physical act. Some even call it animal instinct or animal behavior. In other words something that is totally physical or natural with any mental or emotional involvement being secondary. The point is that in our Western Culture we focus of sex as a physical manifestation where the Semitic culture the focus is on a mental or emotional manifestation.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:27-28 that whoever looks upon a woman to lust has committed adultery. The word look in Aramaic is the word chaza’ which is to see something that is normally not visible, to fantasize. In other words in the eyes of Jesus the focus of a sexual relationship is mental not physical.

If we, in our culture, will apply a mental and emotional term such as love to a physical act such as sexual intercourse, then we do we not do the same with the Hebrew when it uses a word that is mental and emotional for sexual intercourse? The word used is yada which means to know. Knowing is a mental not physical exercise. Yet in the mind of the Semitic people the focus of a sexual relationship is supposed to be on the mental and emotional. Sexual intercourse is intended for two people who know each other intimately. They know things about each other that no one else in the world would know. They share their deepest thoughts with each other, there are no secrets between them, no lies, no hidden agendas. Is there not a better description of love than this?

So why, if we are so willing to apply the mental and emotional word love to a sexual relationship when our focus is on the physical and not apply that same English word to a mental and emotional word from Hebrew when the culture really uses it properly? Why can we not say “Adam loved Eve and she conceived.” Why do we have to render it as knowing? We consider it almost as a joke when we read Adam knew Eve and she conceived. We laugh and say; “Yeah, that is some knowing.” Yet, that is exactly how she ended up conceiving by knowing which leads to love. Love, whether it is racham, ‘ahav or dod all involve a deep knowing of a person. Knowing enough to trust that person with your very life, to trust that person with your most hidden secrets. When you know someone intimately you trust them and bond with them. You will then just naturally love that person. All that remains to express love is the passion to be joined physically. That part is the chemical and physical part. God’s intention, however, for that part of love was to be shared with only one person. Just as racham is meant to be shared with one person which is God.

But you see, racham is only shared between you and God, not with another human. Racham is a God love. But we cannot know that love until we leave this body and our spirits become one with God’s Spirit.

So, God wants us to understand in the best possible way just how special racham is. But if He gave us that racham for another person then it loses its specialness. So what He did was give man the ability to love but to carry that love into a special realm by providing a physical expression of the love which we call intercourse. This allows love to extends beyond what you feel for others and allows you to manifest that love in a way with just one person, in a way that you would not manifest with anyone else in the world.

It is not racham but simply ‘ahav on steroids. It is the ‘ahav premium. ‘Ahav expressed physically. That is why the enemy wants it abused, cheapened and totally diluted the physical expression of love so we cannot even imagine the special love, the racham that awaits us in heaven with God. That is why there is no marriage in heaven for the love we will know in heaven is a giant step above ‘ahav premium. Physical intimacy is the ultimate level that ‘ahav can reach. That’s the gold standard. “Ahav can get no higher than that. The next level brings us into the platinum level and who wants gold when you can have all platinum. The love of parents, children, friends will never reach ‘Ahav premium or gold. Only your one mate that you join with physically will get you to that level. That is except when you are in the womb. Then you must be in a state of racham with your mother for that is the very definition of racham, the womb. Unfortunately, who remembers that? Even the mother cannot remember completely, although she will always cherish that memory when she first held that child in her arms.

One fly in the ointment here. Didn’t the scribe quoting Jesus say in Matthew 22:33 say: “Love your neighbor as yourself ” and use the word racham for neighbor. Here I say racham is only a word God can use. But we are to love our neighbor with racham.

I have a theory. A baby, while in the mother’s womb is a part of the mother. Racham means the womb or the love for a baby inside the womb. Could that be what the scribe meant that we are love our neighbor like a mother loves herself or the baby inside her womb? I mean really, do we want people to love us as they love themselves. Many people hate themselves, who wants that kind of love? Maybe I am stretching things to fit my theory about racham so I don’t have to delete this study.

But one thing of which I can be sure, without love, there can be no intimacy, either in the physical realm or the spiritual.