Bible Reference > Bible Facts > The Seven Deadly Sins
Quick Summary
Acedia is an old Christian name for a kind of spiritual weariness: a listless, restless apathy toward God, prayer, other people and one's own calling. The word comes from the Greek akedia, "lack of care." Early monks called it "the noonday demon." Over time acedia was folded into the list of seven deadly sins under the name sloth.
The English Bible never uses the word acedia, but Scripture describes what it names again and again. Proverbs mocks the sluggard who will not get out of bed. Jesus condemns the servant who buried his talent out of fear. Hebrews warns against drifting away, and Revelation against a faith that has gone lukewarm. Sloth in the Bible is less about being physically lazy than about ceasing to care. It is different from rest, which God commands, and different from the exhaustion of burnout, which Scripture treats with compassion. The Bible's answer to acedia is renewed attention: prayer, Sabbath, community and small, steady acts of faithfulness.
Scripture Reference
The sluggard in Proverbs: Proverbs 6:6–11; 13:4; 22:13; 24:30–34; 26:13–16
Neglect and decay: Ecclesiastes 10:18
The buried talent: Matthew 25:14–30
Asleep in Gethsemane: Matthew 26:36–46
Drifting and sluggishness: Hebrews 2:1; 6:11–12
First love and lukewarm faith: Revelation 2:4; 3:15–16
Weariness and renewal: 1 Kings 19:1–18; Isaiah 40:28–31; Matthew 11:28–30; Galatians 6:9
What Does Sloth Mean in the Bible?
The Words Behind "Sloth"
English Bibles use words like "lazy," "sluggard," "idle" and "slothful," and they translate several different terms.
Hebrew atsel. The "sluggard" or "lazy person" of Proverbs, a stock character who always has an excuse.
Greek okneros. "Hesitant, shrinking back." The master calls the servant who buried his talent "wicked and lazy" with this word (Matthew 25:26), and Paul uses it when he says, "Do not lag in zeal" (Romans 12:11).
Greek nothros. "Dull, sluggish." Hebrews worries that its readers have "become dull in understanding" and urges them not to "become sluggish" (Hebrews 5:11; 6:12).
Greek akedia. "Lack of care," the source of the word acedia. It does not appear in the Greek New Testament, but the Greek translation of the Old Testament uses it for the "faint spirit" in Isaiah 61:3 and for the soul that "melts away for sorrow" in Psalm 119:28.
Put together, the Bible's vocabulary describes more than a lack of energy. It describes shrinking back, growing dull and ceasing to care.
Sloth and Laziness
In everyday speech, sloth means laziness: lying on the couch when there is work to do. Proverbs certainly includes that. But the deeper biblical concern is a person who has stopped engaging with what God has given them to love and do. Sloth can look very busy. A person can fill every hour with distraction and still be avoiding the one conversation, the one prayer or the one task that matters. In modern life sloth often looks less like idleness and more like endless scrolling.
Sloth and Rest
The Bible never treats rest as a sin. God rested on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2–3) and commanded Israel to keep the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8–11). Jesus told his tired disciples, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while" (Mark 6:31). See What Is the Sabbath in the Bible?
The difference is direction. Rest restores a person and sends them back to their life with God and neighbor. Sloth evades that life. Rest says, "I trust God to hold the world while I stop." Sloth says, "I no longer care whether it is held."
Sloth in Proverbs and the Old Testament
The Sluggard
The book of Proverbs paints the sluggard with a mix of humor and alarm. He is a comic figure until you notice yourself in him.
He will not get up. "As a door turns on its hinges, so does a lazy person in bed" (Proverbs 26:14). He moves, but he goes nowhere.
He will not finish. "The lazy person buries a hand in the dish, and is too tired to bring it back to the mouth" (Proverbs 26:15). The food is right in front of him.
He always has a reason. "The lazy person says, 'There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!'" (Proverbs 22:13). The excuse is absurd, and he believes it anyway.
He thinks he is wise. "The lazy person is wiser in self-esteem than seven who can answer discreetly" (Proverbs 26:16). Sloth is good at explaining itself.
He wants without working. "The appetite of the lazy craves, and gets nothing, while the appetite of the diligent is richly supplied" (Proverbs 13:4).
"Go to the Ant"
Proverbs sends the sluggard to an unlikely teacher: "Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise" (Proverbs 6:6). The ant has no boss standing over it, and still it gathers food in summer for the winter ahead. Then comes a warning that Proverbs repeats almost word for word: "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want, like an armed warrior" (Proverbs 6:10–11; 24:33–34).
The phrase that matters is "a little." Sloth rarely arrives all at once. It comes in small postponements that add up.
The Broken-Down Wall
One short scene in Proverbs works like a parable. "I passed by the field of one who was lazy, by the vineyard of a stupid person; and see, it was all overgrown with thorns; the ground was covered with nettles, and its stone wall was broken down" (Proverbs 24:30–31). No one attacked that vineyard. It simply was not tended. Ecclesiastes says the same of a house: "Through sloth the roof sinks in, and through indolence the house leaks" (Ecclesiastes 10:18).
The image fits more than farms and roofs. Friendships, marriages, prayer lives and churches can fall into ruin the same way, without any single dramatic failure, simply through neglect.
Jesus and the New Testament on Spiritual Apathy
The Buried Talent
Jesus' clearest teaching on sloth is the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14–30). A master entrusts large sums to three servants and leaves. Two put the money to work. The third digs a hole and buries it. When the master returns, the third servant explains himself: "I knew that you were a harsh man... so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground" (Matthew 25:24–25).
The master's answer is sharp: "You wicked and lazy slave!" (Matthew 25:26). The servant did not steal or waste anything. He did nothing, and he did nothing because he was afraid and had a distorted picture of his master. That is the root of much sloth. It is often fear dressed up as caution.
"Could You Not Stay Awake with Me?"
In Gethsemane, Jesus asked Peter, James and John to keep watch while he prayed. Three times he came back and found them asleep. "So, could you not stay awake with me one hour? Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:40–41).
Luke adds that they were "sleeping because of grief" (Luke 22:45). The disciples were overwhelmed, and sleep was their escape from a moment too heavy to face. Jesus' words are both a warning and a kind of understanding. He knows how weak the flesh is, and he still calls them to watch and pray.
Drifting and Growing Dull
The letter to the Hebrews was written to believers who were not rejecting their faith outright but slowly letting it go. "We must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it" (Hebrews 2:1). Drifting takes no effort. You only have to stop rowing. The writer urges them to keep up their earnestness "so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises" (Hebrews 6:12), and not to neglect meeting together (Hebrews 10:25).
First Love and Lukewarm Faith
Two of the letters in Revelation describe what acedia looks like in a congregation. The church at Ephesus was doctrinally sound and hardworking, but Jesus says, "I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first" (Revelation 2:4). The church at Laodicea was comfortable and self-satisfied: "I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot... because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth" (Revelation 3:15–16). In both churches, faith continued on the outside while love cooled on the inside.
Do Not Grow Weary
Paul speaks to the same struggle with encouragement. "So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up" (Galatians 6:9). He also gives the practical side: those in Thessalonica who had stopped working and become "mere busybodies" are told to settle down and earn their own living, for "anyone unwilling to work should not eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10–12). And to the Romans: "Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord" (Romans 12:11).
What Is Acedia?
The Noonday Demon
The word acedia comes to us from the Christian monks of the Egyptian desert in the 300s AD. The most influential description was written by Evagrius Ponticus, a monk who listed eight "thoughts" or temptations that attack the soul. He called acedia the most troublesome of them and nicknamed it "the noonday demon," borrowing a phrase from the Greek version of Psalm 91:6, which speaks of "the destruction that wastes at noonday."
Evagrius's portrait is familiar. The demon of acedia strikes in the middle of the day. The sun seems to stand still, and the day feels fifty hours long. The monk keeps looking out the window to see if anyone is coming. He starts to hate the place where he lives and the work he does. He remembers his family and his old life, and he thinks he could serve God better somewhere else, anywhere else. He is restless and bored at the same time.
Evagrius's remedy was simple and hard: stay put. Remain in your cell, keep to your daily work and prayer, and wait out the temptation. He believed that the one who endures acedia finds a deeper peace on the other side.
From Acedia to Sloth
John Cassian, who had lived among the desert monks, brought their teaching to the monasteries of the West and devoted a whole book of his Institutes to acedia. Around 600 AD, Pope Gregory the Great reworked the list of eight into seven deadly sins, folding acedia into sadness. Later medieval writers brought it back under the Latin name for sloth, and the list most people know today took shape. The story is told in History of the 7 Deadly Sins and What Are the 7 Deadly Sins?
In the 1200s, Thomas Aquinas defined acedia as "sorrow about spiritual good," a kind of sadness at the very things that should bring joy, like God's love and the life of prayer. He placed it opposite the joy that comes from loving God. That definition explains why the sin is deadly in the old sense. It slowly shuts down a person's capacity to delight in God.
As the list passed into popular use, "sloth" came to mean mainly physical laziness, and the spiritual depth of acedia was largely forgotten. In recent years writers such as Kathleen Norris, in her book Acedia & Me, have revived the old word because it names something many people recognize.
What Acedia Feels Like
Acedia rarely announces itself. It tends to show up as:
Restlessness and boredom at the same time
Prayer that feels pointless, and Scripture that feels flat
A vague sense that life would be better somewhere else
Busyness and distraction that keep the deeper questions away
Going through the motions of faith while the heart checks out
A sense that nothing you do really matters
The word itself, "lack of care," may be the best description. Acedia is the slow loss of caring about the things that matter most.
Acedia and Modern Burnout
Where They Meet
Burnout is usually described as exhaustion combined with detachment: a person keeps functioning, but feels cynical and distant from work, relationships and sometimes faith. Acedia and burnout are not the same thing. Burnout usually comes from outside pressures, such as too much work, too little support and too long without rest. Acedia is a spiritual condition, a loss of care toward God and the good. But they often meet. Exhaustion that goes on long enough can harden into the numbness acedia describes, and acedia can make every responsibility feel heavier.
Isaiah described this kind of faith long ago: "these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me" (Isaiah 29:13). Life goes on, the work gets done, but the heart has gone somewhere else.
Elijah Under the Broom Tree
Scripture's clearest portrait of burnout is the prophet Elijah. Right after his great victory over the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, Queen Jezebel threatened his life, and he ran. A day's journey into the wilderness, he sat down under a broom tree and prayed to die: "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors" (1 Kings 19:4). See Who Was Elijah in the Bible?
What God did next is worth noticing. God let him sleep. An angel woke him, gave him bread and water, and let him sleep again. Then the angel woke him a second time: "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you" (1 Kings 19:7). Only after Elijah had rested and eaten did God speak to him, and then in "a sound of sheer silence" (1 Kings 19:12). God told Elijah he was not alone, that seven thousand in Israel had stayed faithful, and gave him a companion and successor in Elisha (1 Kings 19:18–19).
The story holds both truths. God treated Elijah's exhaustion with tenderness and practical care. And God did not leave him under the tree. He sent him back to his calling, with company.
Rest or Escape?
This is where the line between rest and acedia matters most. Rest restores engagement. Escape avoids it. A person can take a day off, sleep well and come back ready to love again. A person can also numb out on screens, retreat from friends and call it self-care while slowly disappearing. Jesus offers the first kind: "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). His rest leads back into life with him.
Seeking Help Is Faithful
The Bible never glorifies carrying burdens alone. Elijah was restored through food, sleep, God's presence and a friend. Moses was told by his father-in-law, "You will surely wear yourself out... the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone" (Exodus 18:18). Asking for help, setting limits and taking a real Sabbath are acts of trust.
Burnout, acedia and depression can look alike, and they can overlap. If weariness has become persistent hopelessness, or if, like Elijah, you have found yourself wishing your life would end, please talk to someone you trust and reach out to a doctor or counselor. In the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Seeking that help is part of how God cares for us.
| What It Looks Like | Biblical Picture | |
|---|---|---|
| Rest | Stopping on purpose, then returning renewed | God rests on the seventh day (Gen. 2:2–3) |
| Sloth | Avoiding work and responsibility, full of excuses | The sluggard's overgrown vineyard (Prov. 24:30–34) |
| Acedia | Restless, bored, prayer feels pointless, the heart checks out | The church that left its first love (Rev. 2:4) |
| Burnout | Exhausted and detached after long strain | Elijah under the broom tree (1 Kings 19:4) |
How to Resist Acedia
The old monks and the Bible agree that acedia gives way to small, steady faithfulness more than to bursts of intensity.
Stay. Evagrius told the restless monk to remain in his cell. For most of us, that means staying with the marriage, the congregation, the prayer practice or the work in front of us instead of fantasizing about a different life.
Do the next small thing. Proverbs' ant does not do anything heroic. It gathers a little food every day. One psalm, one phone call, one task finished is enough to start.
Pray honestly. The psalms are full of weariness turned into prayer: "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God" (Psalm 42:5). Acedia withdraws from God. Lament keeps talking to him.
Keep the Sabbath. Real rest, set apart for God and free of numbing distraction, is one of the best defenses against both burnout and acedia.
Stay connected. Hebrews links drifting with neglecting to meet together (Hebrews 10:24–25). Acedia isolates. Community draws us back.
Remember your first love. Jesus' counsel to Ephesus was to "remember then from what you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first" (Revelation 2:5). Sometimes desire returns only after we begin to act again.
And underneath all of it is a promise: "those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint" (Isaiah 40:31).
Frequently Asked Questions About Acedia and Sloth
What is acedia?
Acedia is a spiritual condition of apathy, restlessness and loss of care toward God, prayer and one's calling. The word comes from the Greek akedia, "lack of care." Early Christian monks called it "the noonday demon."
Is acedia in the Bible?
The word does not appear in English Bibles or in the Greek New Testament. The Greek translation of the Old Testament uses it in Psalm 119:28 and Isaiah 61:3. The condition it names appears throughout Scripture, in the sluggard of Proverbs, the buried talent, the sleeping disciples, the drifting believers of Hebrews and the lukewarm church of Revelation.
Is acedia the same as sloth?
They are closely related. Acedia was one of the eight temptations described by the early monks. When the list became the seven deadly sins, acedia was eventually renamed sloth. Over time, sloth came to mean mainly physical laziness, while acedia keeps the older sense of spiritual apathy.
What does sloth mean in the Bible?
Sloth in the Bible is a refusal to engage with the work, relationships and calling God gives. Proverbs pictures it as the sluggard who makes excuses and lets his vineyard fall into ruin (Proverbs 24:30–34), and Jesus condemns it in the servant who buried his talent out of fear (Matthew 25:26).
Is sloth a sin?
Christian tradition counts sloth among the seven deadly sins. Scripture treats laziness and spiritual neglect as serious because they waste what God entrusts and harm others who depend on us (Proverbs 6:6–11; 2 Thessalonians 3:10–12).
Is rest the same as sloth?
No. God commands rest and models it (Genesis 2:2–3; Exodus 20:8–11). Rest restores a person for life with God and neighbor. Sloth avoids that life.
Is burnout a sin?
No. Exhaustion is part of human life, and Scripture treats it with compassion, as God did with Elijah (1 Kings 19). The spiritual danger is letting long weariness turn into withdrawal from God and others. Burnout often calls for rest, help and changed circumstances.
What is the opposite of sloth?
The virtue traditionally opposed to sloth is diligence, sometimes called zeal. Aquinas set acedia against the joy that comes from loving God. See Opposing Virtues for Each Deadly Sin.
What is the noonday demon?
It was the early monks' name for acedia, taken from the Greek version of Psalm 91:6, "the destruction that wastes at noonday." The temptation was thought to strike in the long middle hours of the day.
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Works Consulted
Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer
John Cassian, The Institutes
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
Jean-Charles Nault, The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times
Kathleen Norris, Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life
Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices
