ἐξουσία
authority
‘authority’ is one of 4 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Genitive-case word in the Greek New Testament →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Case
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
1 verse where G1849 appears in the Accusative case in the Book of Colossians. Filtered view — show all forms. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Greek form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Greek New Testament; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences of this word are not indexed here.
Colossians
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
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.
- #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
- Revelation 19 verses 20%
- Luke 15 verses 16%
- Matthew 9 verses 10%
By section of the New Testament
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
- power of choice, liberty of doing as one pleases
- physical and mental power
- the power of authority (influence) and of right (privilege)
- 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.
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
- 2 Kings 20:13 ἐξουσία
- Psalms 113:2 ἐξουσία
- Proverbs 17:14 ἐξουσία
- Ecclesiastes 8:8 ἐξουσία
- Daniel 3:2 ἐξουσία
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.
- 2 Kings 20:13 ἐξουσία Hezekiah listened to them, and shown them all the house of his precious things, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious oil, and the house of his armor, and all that was found in his treasures: there was nothing in his house, nor in all his dominion, that Hezekiah didn't show them.
- Psalms 113:2 ἐξουσία Blessed be the name of Yahweh, From this time forth and forevermore.
- Psalms 135:8 ἐξουσία Who struck the firstborn of Egypt, Both of man and animal;
- Psalms 135:9 ἐξουσία Who sent signs and wonders into the midst of you, Egypt, On Pharaoh, and on all his servants;
- Proverbs 17:14 ἐξουσία The beginning of strife is like breaching a dam, Therefore stop contention before quarreling breaks out.
- Ecclesiastes 8:8 ἐξουσία There is no man who has power over the spirit to contain the spirit; neither does he have power over the day of death. There is no discharge in war; neither shall wickedness deliver those who practice it.
- Daniel 3:2 ἐξουσία Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together the satraps, the deputies, and the governors, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, to come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.
- Daniel 3:97 ἐξουσία
- Daniel 4:10 ἐξουσία Thus were the visions of my head on my bed: I saw, and, behold, a tree in the midst of the earth; and the height of it was great.
- Daniel 4:20 ἐξουσία The tree that you saw, which grew, and was strong, whose height reached to the sky, and the sight of it to all the earth;
- Daniel 4:24 ἐξουσία this is the interpretation, O king, and it is the decree of the Most High, which is come on my lord the king:
- Daniel 4:29 ἐξουσία At the end of twelve months he was walking in the royal palace of Babylon.
- Daniel 5:4 ἐξουσία They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.
- Daniel 5:7 ἐξουσία The king cried aloud to bring in the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers. The king spoke and said to the wise men of Babylon, Whoever shall read this writing, and show me the interpretation of it, shall be clothed with purple, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.
- Daniel 5:14 ἐξουσία I have heard of you, that the spirit of the gods is in you, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom are found in you.
- Daniel 5:18 ἐξουσία You king, the Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar your father the kingdom, and greatness, and glory, and majesty:
- Daniel 6:4 ἐξουσία Then the presidents and the satraps sought to find occasion against Daniel as touching the kingdom; but they could find no occasion nor fault, because he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him.
- Daniel 7:12 ἐξουσία As for the rest of the animals, their dominion was taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.
- Daniel 7:14 ἐξουσία There was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.
- Daniel 7:26 ἐξουσία But the judgment shall be set, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it to the end.
- Daniel 7:27 ἐξουσία The kingdom and the dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole the sky, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High: his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.
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.
