Eshu returns, sometimes immediately and sometimes after the two friends have already come to blows, and reveals the trick: both men were right about what they saw, and both were wrong to assume their own vantage point was the whole truth. The story is told across Yoruba communities and their diaspora as a lesson about the limits of any single perspective, cautioning against the certainty that comes from seeing only one side of a situation, and it is frequently invoked in contexts of dispute or misunderstanding as a reminder that apparent contradictions can both be true from where each party stands.
The story also carries a second, more directly religious function within Ifa practice: it dramatizes why Eshu must be acknowledged and given his due offerings before any other ritual or undertaking, since as the god who governs chance, boundaries, and the space between perspectives, he is also the one who can either smooth or disrupt communication and outcomes depending on whether he has been properly honored. Scholars of Yoruba religion, including Bascom's early ethnographic work on Ifa divination and Idowu's study of the broader Yoruba pantheon, treat Eshu's trickster function as inseparable from his more solemn role as an intermediary, rather than reading him, as some earlier missionary-era accounts did, as a simple analogue to the Christian devil.
Sources Ifa Divination: Communication between Gods and Men in West AfricaWilliam Bascom with Olodumare: God in Yoruba BeliefE. Bolaji Idowu