knowing: a firm grasp of how things really are, ranging from a craftsman's skill to moral good sense to knowing God personally
This is the noun built from the ordinary verb "to know," and like that verb it covers far more than facts in the head. It can be the trained skill in a metalworker's hands, the good sense that keeps a person out of trouble, the awareness a person either has or lacks, or the deep acknowledgment of God that a faithful life is built on. There is no single English word that fits all of these at once, which is why translations swap between knowledge, skill, discernment, and understanding.
What ties the senses together is that the knowing here is practical and engaged, not detached. Even at its most God-centered it is something you live out, not just something you hold an opinion about. The wisdom books treat it almost as a name for wisdom itself, something to be loved, sought, and guarded. The prophets, above all Hosea, use it for a right relationship with God that shows up in how people treat each other.
The contexts do most of the work of pinning down the sense. A building text means skill, a Proverbs verse means moral discernment, a Hosea verse means covenant loyalty to God, and a few hard passages (above all the tree in Eden) have kept scholars arguing for centuries over which kind of knowing is meant.
Nuances
What the knowledge of good and evil in Eden actually is has no settled answer. The main proposals are moral discernment or the godlike authority to decide right and wrong for oneself; sexual awareness; the maturity of coming of age; and comprehensive, godlike knowledge of everything. Most current scholars favor a moral or legal self-determination reading, often blended with the wisdom tradition, while the sexual and pure-maturity readings retain a minority following.
- majorityMoral or legal self-determination, often joined to wisdom: The knowledge is the capacity, or the claimed right, to determine good and evil authoritatively, a prerogative that belongs to God; eating it is humanity grasping at a godlike role. Frequently combined with the wisdom tradition's discernment.; W. M. Clark, "A Legal Background to the Yahwist's Use of 'Good and Evil' in Genesis 2-3," Journal of Biblical Literature 88 (1969): 266-78; Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary 1 (Word, 1987), 62-64, 75; Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 19
- minorityComprehensive godlike knowledge (a polar pair meaning everything): Good and evil is a way of saying everything, so the knowledge is near-total comprehension fitting only God; the story is about humanity overreaching its creaturely limit.; Gerhard von Rad, Genesis, Old Testament Library, rev. ed. (Westminster, 1972), 79-93; Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11 (Augsburg, 1984), 242-48
- minoritySexual awareness: Eating awakens sexual awareness, since the related verb is the standard idiom for sexual intimacy and the couple at once notice their nakedness. Now a minority view; critics object that God is said to share this knowledge yet is not a sexual being.; Robert Gordis, "The Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Old Testament and the Qumran Scrolls," Journal of Biblical Literature 76 (1957): 123-38