एतान्न हन्तुमिच्छामि घ्नतोऽपि मधुसूदन।अपि त्रैलोक्यराज्यस्य हेतोः किं नु महीकृते॥
etān na hantum icchāmi ghnato ’pi madhusūdanaapi trailokya-rājyasya hetoḥ kiṃ nu mahī-kṛte
Word by word
The verse says
I do not wish to kill them, Krishna, even if they kill me — not for lordship over the three worlds, let alone for this earth.
In plain words
He would rather die than fight them. He says it plainly, and he means it.
Not for the whole universe, he says. Certainly not for a piece of land.
There is something genuinely fine in this. There is also something sliding underneath it, which becomes clearer in the verses ahead.
Where you've felt this · with money
Saying you would rather lose the house than fight your brother over it. In the moment it is completely true and it is the better instinct. It also settles nothing, because the house still has to be dealt with tomorrow.
Going deeper
This is the high point of Arjuna's case, and everything after it declines.
He has just said he would accept his own death rather than kill his kin. That is not cowardice by any definition. It is a moral position, held at maximum cost, and the Gita lets him state it in full.
But hold it up against what he has actually been asked to do. This war reached the field after every alternative failed — negotiation, exile, a final request for five villages. Refusing now does not produce peace. It produces the same war without him, fought by his brothers, who will lose.
So the noble refusal has a hole in it. Arjuna is treating his withdrawal as though it would stop the killing, when it would only remove him from it. Krishna will make this point sharply in Chapter 3: not acting is also an act, with consequences you still own. Standing aside is not the clean option it feels like from inside.