Those whose old wrong has finally worn away turn, unwavering, to worship.

Read as purification preparing a non-dual certainty.

Shankara and Madhusudana read the firm vow as the resolve of one who has let go of every other refuge, certain that the supreme Self worshipped here is one's own true Self and nothing besides. Merit clears the ground; it does not itself deliver the final knowing. Madhusudana adds the exact logical service this verse performs: universal delusion was the general rule stated just before, and this verse supplies its necessary exception, so the two claims were never actually in tension.

Read as the self, purified, reaching its own distinct Lord.

Ramanuja reads the sin worn away here as beginningless, matter-born delusion, cleared only by an immense heap of merit across many births. What is sought, once cleared, is not dissolution into an undifferentiated absolute but real, specific goods: release from age and death, direct knowledge of the self as distinct from matter, great lordship, and finally the reaching of the Lord himself, self before Lord, purified but never erased.

Read with care about what the source itself preserves.

What survives of Madhva's own comment here is brief: a marker that Krishna now turns to describe those who are otherwise, free of the pair-delusion binding the rest. On a Dvaita reading extended from his wider system, one would expect even this freedom to be read as dependent, something the Lord permits rather than the self achieves alone, though that extension goes beyond what the extant text on this verse itself states.

Read as the tearing of delusion's canopy, revealing all as one.

Abhinavagupta reads the wearing away of sin as the wearing away of tamas, darkness, achieved by exhausting merit and demerit alike. What tears apart is the canopy of great delusion itself, and what stands revealed is that all things whatsoever are nothing but Brahman, studded with the rays of the one Lord, so that even the darkness of old age and death has already flowed away for one who knows this.

Read as the clearing that lets single-hearted love finally stand.

Sridhara traces a careful sequence: confusion of the pairs departs only when wrong departs, and wrong departs by good conduct; only then does single-hearted devotion stand up steady on its own strength. Later voices in his tradition press further still, some holding that pure devotion is not caused by merit in the ordinary sense at all, and can instead arise through grace or a great soul's glance, though that further claim belongs to the wider bhakti lineage rather than to Sridhara's own preserved words on this verse.

Read as a practice for right now, not a distant calculation.

Madhusudana's resolution of the apparent contradiction between universal delusion and the earlier fourfold worship reframes the whole matter practically: rather than trying to calculate whether enough merit has accumulated, the point is to recognize that this exception is always, in principle, a live possibility, and to simply continue gathering the deeds that purify, trusting the process instead of auditing it.