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Thou lickest up, devouring all the worlds on every side with Thy flaming mouths. Thy fierce rays, filling the whole world with radiance, are burning, O Vishnu!

You lick your lips, devouring all the worlds on every side with flaming mouths. Your fierce rays fill the whole universe with radiance and scorch it, Vishnu.

Arjuna's description reaches its most frightening point. Krishna is licking, swallowing the worlds on every side with burning mouths, and his fierce light fills and scorches the universe. The image of a devouring god is ancient: the same power that creates and sustains also takes back. In the previous chapter Krishna called himself all-seizing death; here that claim takes visible shape. The verse leaves Arjuna, and the reader, with no comfortable distance. Before asking who this is, Arjuna must first face that the divine includes the dissolution of everything he knows.