Advaita Vedānta

These commentators tie the verse directly to ignorance of the Self as the cause of seeing the worshipper and the worshipped deity as separate. They quote the Brihadaranyaka warning that whoever worships another deity, thinking 'the deity is one and I am another', does not truly know, and is like an animal serving the gods. On this reading, fruit-seeking deity-worship belongs to the section of scripture dealing with nescience; the worshipper helps the gods the way cattle help a farmer, while remaining ignorant. The swift result that knowledge cannot match is explained by the fact that knowledge depends on the slow purification of the inner organ, whereas ritual results need no such inner ripening. So the verse marks the dividing line between the path of works under ignorance and the path of knowledge.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here Krishna is the inner self of Indra and the other deities and the enjoyer of all sacrifices, so deity-worship is really, though unknowingly, addressed to him. The reason no one worships him directly with no eye to fruit is that endless sin, set running from beginningless time and not yet exhausted, robs people of discernment, so they crave swift fruit and treat all action as mere deity-worship for a son, cattle, food, or heaven. This school also reads the verse as the opening of a six-verse introduction to karma-yoga, with the next verses turning to the rarity of the fit aspirant and to the very nature of action; the question raised here is why the great fruit being available, small-minded people still aim at the small.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

This school reads the verse not mainly as a contrast of motives but as supplying the proof for the previous claim that all paths reach the Lord. The swift, plainly perceived arrival of action's fruit is itself the evidence: results are gained only because the Lord is the real enjoyer and director of all actions, the souls being non-independent. Even though fruit seems to come from Indra and the other deities, the presumption that they are the givers is exhausted by this reasoning; the fruit is from the Lord alone. They support this with the Chandogya line 'therefore they are winners of wealth', reading the verse as a tight argument that the Lord's universal agency follows from the fact that action bears fruit at all.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

The Pushtimarga reads the delay in the Lord's gift as a feature of grace, not a defect. The deities are 'upadhic', conditioned, and so they hand over conditioned objects of desire swiftly under that same conditioning. The Lord, being unconditioned, takes thought before granting; there is sifting and clearing, so delay is natural. The relation with Purushottama is not won by a worldly body at all but only after love is tested, after burning and the agony of separation, and even then the experience mingles bliss with the pain of separation, as shown in Vraja by the Kaliya episode and the affair of Uddhava. So those who want swift fruit go to the swift hand; the seeker of the Lord's full embrace must learn the patience of grace.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These devotional commentators stress that the path of devotion to Krishna is actually present and available, yet desire-driven people abandon even that and run to the path of action that pays quickly. The Lord is the granter of eternal bliss and the Lord of all the gods, who are themselves only his servants; to worship them for a son or cattle is to leave the master for the staff. Jnaneshwari adds a vivid image: although the Lord is the underlying basis of all this varied worship, the fruit returns to each worshipper only by the measure of his own desire, as a field returns what is sown, a mirror what is held before it, an echo what is uttered at the foot of a mountain. The rarity of the fit, discerning devotee is the real point: terrified of worldly suffering, only a rare person worships the Lord with desireless works.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

The modern voices reframe the verse for a contemporary reader. One reads even fruit-seeking deity-worship as, in the end, a roundabout worship of the Supreme that ripens into desireless worship and eventually release as the yoga grows, so the verse is not condemning these people but placing them early on one continuous road. Another widens 'gods' beyond traditional heavenly beings to whatever reflects the divine, including the great natural forces such as steam and electricity, whose propitiation bears quick but short-lived fruit that brings no comfort to the soul. A third draws the sharp practical contrast: the Lord is like a father who gives only what is for the child's good and asks no price, while the deities are like a shopkeeper who, once paid in the proper ritual, will hand over even harmful things without weighing benefit and harm; the human world alone is the field of action, and attachment to perishable things keeps people hurrying after quick, action-born success. The common modern thread is that worldly success is quick and easy, but Self-realization demands renunciation, the fourfold means, and sustained meditation, and so is rarely chosen.

Lokmanya Tilak · Mahatma Gandhi · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda