एवमुक्तो हृषीकेशो गुडाकेशेन भारत।सेनयोरुभयोर्मध्ये स्थापयित्वा रथोत्तमम्॥
evam ukto hṛṣīkeśo guḍākeśena bhāratasenayor ubhayor madhye sthāpayitvā rathottamam
Word by word
The verse says
Sanjaya said: Asked in this way by Arjuna, Krishna halted that splendid chariot between the two armies.
In plain words
Krishna does it. No argument, no warning.
He is being asked for something that will take his friend apart, and he simply drives the chariot there and stops.
He knows what Arjuna is about to see. He does it anyway.
Where you've felt this · in friendship
Your friend asks you to open her exam results, because her own hands are shaking. You have already seen the top line. You could soften it, or stall. They are her results, and stalling would only be for you.
Going deeper
Krishna's restraint here is the first thing he does in the Gita, and it sets the terms of everything after.
He could refuse. He could warn. He could drive to a different part of the line and give Arjuna a view that would not hurt so much. He does none of it. He is asked to stop in the middle, so he stops in the middle.
There is a kind of respect in that which is easy to miss because it looks like inaction. Krishna treats Arjuna as someone entitled to see his own situation, even when seeing it will wreck him. He does not manage his friend.
This is worth remembering when the teaching starts and Krishna becomes, for many chapters, extremely direct - even severe. The severity is not impatience. It comes from the same place as the silence here: a refusal to handle Arjuna as though he were fragile.