The third line sits at the join of the two waters and is boxed in on every side. Legge's translation has the subject confronted by a defile whether he comes or goes, with peril and unrest, and his endeavours leading him into the cavern of the pit, and it concludes that there should be no action. The commentary on the image says he will succeed in nothing. This is the one place in the figure where both trigrams press at once, the top of the lower Kan meeting the bottom of the upper Kan, and the line is caught between them.
The stroke is yielding in an odd place, incorrect by the ordinary rule, so the line has no strength of its own at the moment it most needs some. It is also past the centre of its trigram, which puts whatever steadiness the second line found behind it rather than within reach. A position with no firmness, no centrality and danger in both directions is one the text will not recommend any movement from, and the prohibition it issues is total rather than a matter of choosing the better road.
The counsel not to act is the substance of the line and not a failure to give advice. In a hexagram about surviving repeated peril there is a station at which every available exertion feeds the difficulty, and the text names it plainly. Stillness here is what the second line's small gain and the fifth line's containment are both eventually built on.