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ἐξουσία

authority

‘authority’ is one of 4 main senses fuller range ↓

G1849 Strong's Greek
exousía Transliteration
/ex-oo-see'-ah/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 102 appearances

Compare with another word →

About this entry

At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.

At its core, εξουσια (exousía) means “authority.” Ranging over 4 senses, it is not a single-sense word. It appears 93 verses across 16 books of the Greek New Testament, among its moderately common vocabulary. Scripture first uses it in Matthew 7:29. It clusters with εξεστι and εξουσιαζω under a shared root. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
authority
Modern gloss
authority
Strong's 1890 agrees
Strong's 1890 and current Thayer scholarship align on this entry's primary sense — a good signal that the gloss above is unambiguous and stable. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G1849 catalogs a Greek word from the Greek New Testament.

These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Greek New Testament. What Lemma adds →

93
distinct verses
The word appears in 93 distinct verses.
16 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 16 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 7:29
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 7:29.
Revelation 22:14
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 22:14.
#160
by frequency
Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 160 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 93 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 39 · 42%
  • Acts 7 · 8%
  • Pauline Epistles 25 · 27%
  • General Epistles 3 · 3%
  • Revelation 19 · 20%

By traditional corpus

Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Some books belong to more than one corpus (Luke is in both the Gospels and the Lukan corpus, and so on), so these shares overlap and need not total 100%. Each figure is a share of the word’s 93 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 39 verses · 42%
  • Johannine 25 verses · 27%
  • Pauline corpus 25 verses · 27%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 22 verses · 24%
  • Revelation 19 verses · 20%
  • General (Catholic) Epistles 2 verses · 2%
  • Hebrews 1 verse · 1%

How translations render this word

Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).

  • King James Version: Power 60×, Authority 27×, Powers 8×
  • American Standard Version: Authority 51×, Power 26×, Right 9×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Authority 63×, Power 10×, Right 9×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Authority 81×, Authorities 8×, Power 6×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G1849 across 102 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Power” 60×
  • “Authority” 27×
  • “Powers” 8×
  • “Right” 2×

Plus 5 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G1849 across 100 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Authority” 51×
  • “Power” 26×
  • “Right” 9×
  • “Powers” 7×
  • “Authorities” 3×

Plus 4 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.

Berean Standard Bible Public Domain

Renders G1849 across 100 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Authority” 63×
  • “Power” 10×
  • “Right” 9×
  • “Authorities” 7×

Plus 11 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders G1849 across 105 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Authority” 81×
  • “Authorities” 8×
  • “Power” 6×
  • “Right” 6×

Plus 4 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.


Senses in Thayer's

The 4 senses Thayer's distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.

  1. power of choice, liberty of doing as one pleases
  2. physical and mental power
  3. the power of authority (influence) and of right (privilege)
  4. the power of rule or government (the power of him whose will and commands must be submitted to by others and obeyed)

Word origin

Derived from εξεστι (éxesti) (G1832) — it is lawful.

Part of speech: Noun Feminine TDNT: 11:22,2

From G1832 (in the sense of ability ); privilege that is (subjectively) force capacity competency freedom or (objectively) mastery (concretely magistrate superhuman potentate token of control ) delegated influence : - authority jurisdiction liberty power right strength.

— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.


Forms in the corpus

The 7 distinct written forms G1849 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
ἐξουσίαν exousían Noun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine Matthew 7:29 56
ἐξουσίᾳ exousía Noun, Dative, Singular, Feminine Matthew 21:23 16
ἐξουσία exousía Noun, Nominative, Singular, Feminine Matthew 28:18 13
ἐξουσίας exousías Noun, Genitive, Singular, Feminine Luke 23:7 12
ἐξουσίαις exousíais Noun, Dative, Plural, Feminine Romans 13:1 3
ἐξουσίαι exousíai Noun, Nominative, Plural, Feminine Colossians 1:16 1
ἐξουσιῶν exousiō̂n Noun, Genitive, Plural, Feminine 1 Peter 3:22 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G1849, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.

Derives from

Derived from this word

Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint usage

The same Greek word εξουσια appears 28 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 21 verses in 5 books.

28
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
21
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
5 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 5 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G1849) appears in the Greek Septuagint. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.

These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G1849) in the Septuagint — not a translation of any one Hebrew word. The store carries no word-level Hebrew↔Greek alignment, so no Hebrew original is asserted here. Counts come from the recovered LXX Strong's tagging — high-frequency vocabulary is well covered, while rare or late forms may be untagged — so they reflect tagged occurrences and may slightly undercount.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.