«اِلْمَغْلُوبْ مَغْلُوبْ وِفِي الْآخْرَهْ يِضْرَبْ طُوبْ»

The saying describes misfortune as a fixed condition rather than a passing event. Its subject is someone chronically overpowered or ill-fated, not merely the loser of one contest, and is pictured as never escaping that state; even the afterlife, invoked as hyperbole rather than theology, simply hands them more grinding labor.

The punishment is molding mud bricks by hand (the phrase does not mean striking bricks), work the proverb treats as exhausting, lowly toil with little reward. Sending the unlucky person there in the hereafter adds dark humor: some hardship seems so complete that not even eternity looks likely to reverse it.

Said wryly or with resignation about someone whose bad luck seems permanent, often oneself. It suits commiseration or self-mockery after yet another setback, but can sound dismissive or cruel if aimed at a person who is genuinely struggling.