I know what this means: "To pay one debt by incurring another" or other variants of it, but where did the saying come from. I'm not aware of any biblical instance of this.
Deep down I want this to somehow involve Peter, Paul and Mary… đ
Learn English – the origin of “Robbing Peter to pay Paul”
etymologyidioms
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Best Answer
The origin comes from the Peter tax and the Paul tax:
The Peter tax referred to the tax that people had to pay to fund the building of St. Peter's Church, while the Paul tax referred to the tax that the people had to pay to fund the building of St. Paul's Cathedral.
When the idiom says "rob", it takes that if you don't pay a tax, you are robbing a person (pope, in this case) of what that person rightfully deserves.
Thus, the saying means, not paying the Peter tax in order to pay the Paul tax.