Madhu Kanda. Adhyaya 1, Brahmana 4. In the beginning, the Self: I am Brahman
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Each mantra is given four ways: the Sanskrit in its Devanagari script, the same sounds in Roman letters, an English translation set in our own voice, and then the line once more in plain words, for a first and unhurried reading.
Not every passage is opened to the same depth. A few central mantras carry the full cross-school commentary, where the schools are set side by side. The rest are kept here whole and faithful, set in their place but not expounded, so the book stays entire and nothing is dropped for being thought minor.
Where the schools read a line differently, the difference is kept open. None is crowned and none is corrected. Each is met on its own terms, and where they contradict, the contradiction is left standing for you to sit with.
What did Brahman know
Now they say: "Since men think they will become all through the knowledge of Brahman, what was it that Brahman knew, by which it became all?"
Here a question is raised: people believe that by knowing Brahman (brahma-vidya) they will become everything; so what exactly did Brahman itself know, such that by that knowledge it became all this?
In the commentaries
Sankara treats this as a question posed on purpose, to set up the great answer that follows. Men say that by knowing Brahman one becomes all; so the text asks what it was that Brahman knew, by knowing which it became all. The question is not idle curiosity, he notes, but a teaching device: the very content of knowledge that made Brahman become all is about to be disclosed, so that the same knowledge, and the same becoming, may be held out to the seeker.