αὐτοὺς (autous) in Colossians 2:15: Accusative Plural Masculine
αὐτοὺς (autous) in Colossians 2:15
Textual Witness
The witness reads αὐτοὺς in Colossians 2:15, within the clause θριαμβεύσας αὐτοὺς ἐν αὐτῷ.
How The Form Affects Interpretation
The form strengthens the picture of a public victory over a definite plural group, but the surrounding clause, not morphology alone, identifies the target of the action.
How To Communicate It
In English communication, the form is usually best conveyed with a clear plural object like them, keeping the focus on the triumph scene and its defeated powers.
What Not To Say
- Grammatical form should serve context, not override it.
- Accusative plural identifies function, but it does not by itself settle every syntactic detail.
- Masculine grammatical gender here is descriptive grammar, not a theological claim about sex or personhood.
What Does The Label Mean?
Pronoun: the word stands in for or points back to a previously identified referent in the sentence.
Accusative: the form usually marks the direct object or another accusative function governed by the clause.
Plural: the form refers to more than one referent in this occurrence.
Masculine: the form is grammatically masculine here, but that grammatical class does not by itself make a theological gender claim.
What The Form Does In This Verse
θριαμβεύσας
The participle θριαμβεύσας takes the accusative pronoun as its object, so the form points to the ones being publicly displayed in the triumph image.
It functions as the object of the participial action and helps identify who is being led in triumph.
It is not the subject of the clause, and the case alone does not tell us more than that it is being acted upon in this context.
How Much The Form Matters Here
High: The plural pronoun identifies the defeated objects in the triumph image.
Accusative object of the triumph participle. points to the plural group displayed in triumph. Attached to the participle describing public triumph. Governed by the participial action in the victory image. The context identifies the defeated powers, while the pronoun marks them as acted upon.
Who is being displayed in triumph? The plural pronoun points to the defeated powers as the object of the triumph image.
Direct: The accusative plural directly supports a rendering such as 'them' as the object.
The pronoun's referent must be tracked from the surrounding clause, not assumed from the pronoun alone.
Masculine plural pronoun defines the nature of the powers: The grammatical form marks agreement and object role; the passage supplies the identity of the powers.
How The Interpretation Is Derived
The witness reads αὐτοὺς in Colossians 2:15, within the clause θριαμβεύσας αὐτοὺς ἐν αὐτῷ.
The lemma αὐτός is a flexible pronoun that can mean he, she, it, they, them, or same, and here the form is plural and accusative.
In this clause, the grammar most naturally presents a group as the object of the triumph image after the listed rulers and authorities have been stripped and displayed.
The verse communicates decisive defeat and public exposure of hostile powers, with the pronoun helping keep that defeated group in focus.
The form fits the passage's larger movement from disarming hostile powers to showing their loss of standing before God.
For teaching or translation, the pronoun can be rendered plainly as them or them as context requires, while preserving the public-victory imagery.
Do not derive a separate theological category, a change in lemma, or more precision about identity than the immediate context supports.