Out of grace and his own power, Krishna shows Arjuna a form no one else has ever seen.

Where the source itself is brief, only a light extension is offered.

What survives from Shankara here is short: a close paraphrase of the verse, and one added note, that the Lord now praises the form because the sight has fulfilled you. Read in the wider spirit of his teaching, though this goes beyond his own brief words, that fulfillment would touch the single reality underlying every form just shown, radiant and without beginning or end. But this extension should be held loosely; it is not what the source itself states.

For the devotee, since the true form opens only to undivided love.

Notice that Krishna does not simply say I showed you this form; he says I showed it to you, my devotee. Ramanuja reads that address as the hinge of the whole verse: the Lord as he truly is cannot be reached by any means other than undivided devotion, not ritual, not austerity, not inquiry alone. Your privilege in having seen this is not arbitrary. It is the direct consequence of a devotion that reached this singular pitch.

Honest silence, held as silence rather than filled in.

No comment survives from Madhva on this verse, and none should be invented in his name. What can honestly be offered is only a labeled extension: on a Dvaita reading consistent with his positions elsewhere, this gift, like every gift, would be read against your total dependence on the Lord's sanction, never as something owed to you by your own merit. That is an extrapolation, clearly marked, not his own recorded word.

Honest silence, held as silence rather than filled in.

Abhinavagupta's surviving commentary is fragmentary, and this verse falls in one of its gaps; no comment survives, and none is invented here. A labeled extension only: on a Kashmir Shaiva reading, the grace named in this verse might be read as pratyabhijna, the self recognizing its own unbounded freedom in the very form it beholds, so that what you received is less an external gift than a remembering. This is offered as extrapolation, not as his stated word.

For the beloved devotee, consoled rather than merely instructed.

Sridhara hears this as the chapter's great act of consolation. The same Lord terrible enough to devour armies is, in the same breath, gentle enough to console a frightened friend, and he names the showing itself as compassion and names you, pointedly, as a devotee dear enough to receive it. This was never a public spectacle for the merely curious or qualified. It was a private gift, and the fear you carried and the tenderness you now receive are two faces of one relationship, not opposed movements.

Read within the narrative arc of a frightened moment being met with reassurance.

Madhusudana places this verse exactly where the story needs it: seeing you weighed down by fear, the Lord draws the vast form back in and speaks a fitting word of reassurance, the first of three such verses. The grandeur named here, full of splendor, the whole universe, endless, first, is not ornamental description. It gives your fear something to be set against: not denial of what overwhelmed you, but the true scale of the honor you have been shown.