अन्तवन्त इमे देहा नित्यस्योक्ताः शरीरिणः।अनाशिनोऽप्रमेयस्य तस्माद्युध्यस्व भारत॥
antavanta ime dehā nityasyoktāḥ śarīriṇaḥanāśino ’prameyasya tasmād yudhyasva bhārata
Word by word
The verse says
These bodies end. The one who wears them does not — it cannot be destroyed, and it cannot be measured. So fight, Arjuna.
In plain words
Here is the conclusion, and the first time Krishna says the word.
Therefore fight. After seven verses of argument about what lasts, he turns it straight back onto the battlefield.
It is abrupt, and it is meant to be. Arjuna asked a practical question. He is getting a practical answer.
Where you've felt this · in sport
After a long talk about why you play the game at all, the coach says: right, warm up. The thinking was real. It was always going to end in something small and physical.
Going deeper
This verse makes many readers uneasy, and the unease is worth taking seriously rather than talking past.
The structure looks alarming: the soul cannot die, therefore killing is permitted. Read that way it is a licence, and it has occasionally been used as one.
But look at what is actually being licensed. Krishna is not telling a peaceful man to become violent. He is telling a soldier already on a battlefield, in a war that every attempt at peace has failed to prevent, that the specific metaphysical horror paralysing him — I will annihilate these people — is not true.
He is also not saying the deaths do not matter. Chapter 1's grief is never mocked. What is removed is the claim of total authorship: that Arjuna's hand decides whether these men fundamentally are or are not.
The word aprameya — immeasurable — carries weight here too. Not just unkillable but beyond assessment. You cannot take the measure of what a person is, which means you cannot calculate the loss the way Arjuna has been trying to.
And note that the argument is not finished. Therefore fight at verse 18 is provisional. The real answer arrives at 2.47, and it is about motive, not metaphysics.