Like so many common verbs, the meaning of "know" in the Bible is varied and dependent on context. And in some cases -- when it is connected to ideas or objects -- its spiritual meaning and natural meaning are essentially the same. When the Bible talks about people knowing each other and especially when it talks about the Lord knowing people, the meaning has more to do with the states of love within people than it does with any factual knowledge. This makes sense if you think about it. When we really "know" somebody, what we mean is that we know what kind of person they are, what their motivations are, what they love, what they hate, what makes them tick. Those things are far more important than knowing their parents' names, where they were born or what year they graduated from school. Most often then, especially applied to people, "knowing" has to do with the perceptions we have about other people's loves and the conjunction that can exist between those with similar loves, not just a collection of facts.

8318. 'Alarm and dread fell on them' means that they were without any hope of dominion. This is clear from the meaning of 'alarm and dread' - when the phrase applies to those ruled by self-love and therefore by falsities and evils, who are meant by 'the chiefs of Edom' and 'the powerful ones of Moab' - as being without any hope of dominion. Those ruled by the evil of self-love have a constant desire to dominate, but when terror caused by a triumphant enemy strikes them the hope of being able to dominate forsakes them.

[2] It should be recognized that evils arise from a dual origin - self-love and love of the world. People ruled by evils arising from self-love love only themselves and despise everyone else except those who make common cause with them. And if they love these they do not really love them, only themselves, because they see themselves in them. Evils arising from this origin are the worst of all; for those people not only despise all others in contrast to themselves but also heap insults on them, hate them for the slightest reason, and long for their destruction. Vengeance and cruelty accordingly become the delight of their life. People ruled by the evil of self-love are in hell at a great depth determined by the nature and amount of that love.

[3] As for those ruled by evil arising from love of the world, they too regard the neighbour as being worthless. They value him only for his wealth, and so value his wealth but not the person himself. They have the desire to own everything belonging to their neighbour; and when this desire rules them they are devoid of any charity or pity. Robbing their neighbour of his goods is the delight of their life, especially of those who are disgustingly avaricious, that is to say, of those who love gold and silver for their own sakes, not for the sake of any useful purpose served by them. Those with whom the evil of this love reigns are also in hells, but in ones not so deep as the hells which those ruled by the evil of self-love are in. In addition to these two origins of evil there is also a third, which consists in doing evil as a result of false religious principles. But this kind of evil is calculated as evil when it exists with those ruled by self-love and love of the world, but not when it exists with those governed by love towards the neighbour and to their God, since good is their end in view and the end determines the nature of all else, see 8311.