To know: to hold something as settled knowledge, to recognize and be aware of it. The Greek that most often stands behind this verb in the Gospels (oida) is knowing as a possessed fact rather than a process of finding out, and the Aramaic carries that quiet settledness: what is yidaʿ is not being investigated; it is simply held. After two days of perception (hearing, then seeing), this is where perception comes to rest.
Watch where the corpus puts the weight, though. Across its roughly 264 occurrences, the most striking uses are not about what we know but about being known: "Your Father knows what you need before you ask him." And its most sobering uses are about the limit of our knowing: "you do not know the day or the hour." The root draws a clean line between the knowing that is ours to have and the knowing that is not, and invites rest on the right side of it.
| Form | Pattern | Transliteration | Script | Standard | Qala rendering |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The verb | peal (base stem) | yidaʿ | ידע ܝܕܥ | to know | know, recognize |
| He knows | peal participle | yādaʿ | ידע ܝܳܕ݂ܰܥ | he knows | Your Father knows (Matthew 6:8) |
| Let-it-know | peal imperfect | tedaʿ | תדע ܬ݁ܶܕ݁ܰܥ | let it know | don't let your left hand know (Matthew 6:3) |
| You know (plural) | peal participle, plural | yādʿin | ידעין ܝܳܕ݂ܥܺܝܢ | knowing | you do not know (Matthew 25:13) |
| Being made known | ethpeel imperfect | netidaʿ | נתידע ܢܶܬ݂ܺܝܕ݂ܰܥ | will be known | won't be made known (Matthew 10:26) |
| Knowledge | noun (idaʿtā) | idaʿtā | ידעתא ܝܺܕ݂ܰܥܬ݂ܳܐ | knowledge | the key of knowledge (Luke 11:52) |
| Stem | Form | Sense | Witness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peal | yidaʿ | know, recognize | corpus, throughout (~264×) |
| Ethpeel | etidaʿ | be known, be made known | corpus: Matthew 10:26 (netidaʿ) |
| Pael | — | — | not attested in this corpus |
| Ethpaal | — | — | not attested |
| Aphel | awdaʿ | make known, inform | standard lexicon; not cited from this corpus |
| Ettaphal | — | — | not attested |
| Shaphel | — | — | not attested |
Bring to mind one worry you are carrying (a real one). Now say slowly: yādaʿ (he knows), and let Matthew 6:8 stand under it: the knowing happened before your asking. Notice whether anything in your body loosens when the weight of informing God drops away. Then turn the root over and touch its limit: one thing you genuinely do not know and cannot know today. Let "you do not know the day or the hour" be permission to stop pretending, and to stay awake instead.
The Hebrew cognate is yadaʿ, one of Scripture's most intimate verbs: daʿat is "knowledge," and Hosea grieves that the land lacks "knowledge of God." In the Aramaic of Daniel the same root announces what is "made known" to the king. Syriac later built maddʿā, "mind, understanding," on this root (standard lexicon). It completes the arc begun with Sh-M-ʿ and Ḥ-Z-Y (hear, see, know), and Matthew 6:8 quietly joins it to asking, the root of Sh-ʾ-L on day 22. This entry rests on the Syriac witness; no Palestinian Aramaic badge is claimed for it in the glossary.
Take two to three minutes and explain to a friend the two directions of yidaʿ: the knowing we are given ("Your Father knows what you need before you ask him") and the knowing we are refused ("you do not know the day or the hour"). Use the word aloud in both sentences. Then tell them, concretely, what changes about prayer if the informing is already done, and what changes about planning if the hour is genuinely unknowable.