Sanskrit
अश्रद्दधानाः पुरुषा धर्मस्यास्य परन्तप । अप्राप्य मां निवर्तन्ते मृत्युसंसारवर्त्मनि ॥
aśraddadhānāḥ puruṣā dharmasyāsya parantapa aprāpya māṃ nivartante mṛtyusaṃsāravartmani
Translation
Men without faith in this knowledge, O Parantapa, not reaching Me, return to the paths of this world of death.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The warning is structural, not incidental: faith is named as the gate to a teaching that otherwise stays inert, a claim the Gita restates directly much later (17.3) and implicitly through this chapter’s own contrast between devoted and half-hearted worship at verses 22-23. “Return to the paths of this world of death” (mṛtyu-saṃsāra-vartmani) states the stakes as saṃsāra versus liberation — the same opposition verse 1 already set up with “freed from evil.”