Now, to start collecting the data for next year’s … No rest for the wicked.). Perhaps more commonly, no rest for the wicked is used as a humorous stock phrase issued when someone is simply very busy or to characterize that there’s always work to be done (e.g., The year-end report is finished. No rest for the wicked!) or used to admonish someone (You missed class so now you have to copy the whole lesson by hand. This can be wryly self-applied (I slept in and now I have to stay late at work.
For example, heavy metal rocker Ozzy Osbourne named his 1998 album No Rest for the Wicked, alluding both to the proverb and the darker, morbid imagery of his style and music.įamiliar to religious and secular people alike, no rest for the wicked is sometimes used truer to its biblical origins to encourage children to behave or in reference to the punishment of criminals.Īs an informal saying, no rest for the wicked is used in speech and writing to comment on how a workload ultimately increases if a person has a poor work ethic. The saying has become common enough to feature in popular titles. Over time, no rest for the wicked maintained its humorous tone but contemporary uses often omit any implication that one’s ongoing work is due to any faults-as if it’s just the nature of being a modern worker. A 1933 comic strip of Little Orphan Annie, where Annie has to keep after an old miser who keeps putting off replacing a church organ, used the phrase as its title, which may have helped popularize its ironic use. I’d love to stay and chat longer, but I’ve got a report to finish. The saying is usually used with reference to the speaker (e.g.
The biblical passage made its way into secular metaphorical contexts by the early 1700s, taking on a humorous tone by the 1800s and conveying that work and responsibilities never cease, originally with a tongue-in-cheek implication that it’s due to their sinful (lazy) ways. In Christian theology, the passage is interpreted as meaning that unrepentant sinners ( the wicked) will meet with damnation upon death ( no peace/rest).
The now familiar version of the saying, no rest for the wicked, is recorded in a 1574 translation of a sermon of John Calvin. No rest for the wicked begins as no peace for the wicked in a 1425 rendering of the Old Testament’s Book of Isaiah 48:2: “The Lord God said, peace is not to wicked men.” The sentiment is echoed in Isaiah 57:20, which in the King James Version reads: “But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.”
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