16.19

Sanskrit

तानहं द्विषतः क्रूरान्संसारेषु नराधमान् । क्षिपाम्यजस्रमशुभानासुरीष्वेव योनिषु ॥

tān ahaṃ dviṣataḥ krūrān saṃsāreṣu narādhamān kṣipāmy ajasram aśubhān āsurīṣv eva yoniṣu

Translation

These haters, evil, pitiless, vilest among men in the world, I ever throw down into demoniacal wombs.

Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain

Explanation

Krishna’s response to this hatred is rebirth as consequence: these cruel haters are cast, again and again, into demoniacal wombs. This is the chapter’s clearest statement of its punitive mechanism — not eternal damnation in the way later Western theology frames hell, but repeated re-embodiment into conditions that match one’s own inner nature, consistent with the rebirth cosmology assumed throughout the text. Read plainly, it’s a claim that character is inherited into future lives rather than simply judged and closed out.