The fifth line shows a ruler whose intentions are sound but whose circumstances resist him. Legge renders the line as showing the difficulty in the way of its subject's dispensing the rich favours that might be expected from him, a picture not of failure in virtue but of virtue obstructed by conditions beyond its immediate control. The line does not fault the ruler; it names the surrounding difficulty as the true obstacle to what he would otherwise readily provide.
This is the central place of the upper trigram Kan, the position commentary tradition treats as the ruling seat of the hexagram, matched to the fifth line's usual role elsewhere in the system, yet here still caught within the trigram of danger and difficulty that governs the hexagram's upper half. Even a rightly placed and capable ruler cannot simply overcome the chaos of a genuine beginning by decree; the difficulty named throughout the hexagram touches the ruling line as much as any other.
Commentary tradition reads this as a sober correction to any assumption that authority alone resolves difficulty at the beginning. The rich favours the ruler wishes to dispense are real and rightly intended, but their delay is not a mark against him, only a mark of how thoroughly the hexagram's difficulty pervades every position within it, ruling line included. Patience, again, is the implicit counsel, this time extended even to the one who holds the greatest capacity to act.