Nine in the third place is one of the classic's clearest statements that an outcome can be settled by an attitude. The situation described is not itself a misfortune. It is the sun in decline, an ordinary and unavoidable stage, and the evil the text names follows from the response to it, from choosing the groan over the song. A querent drawing this line is being told that the ending is not the problem they are actually facing.
The practical range is wide because the image is structural rather than particular. A project past its best hour, an office about to be handed on, a stage of life closing on schedule: any of them fits. What the line asks is whether the person can mark the close with something plain and adequate, the earthen vessel and the song over it, instead of treating a natural decline as an injury done to them. The commentary's question about how long such a position can last is not cruelty, only a reminder that the answer was never in doubt.
When the line changes, the lower trigram Li becomes Zhen and the figure becomes Biting Through, King Wen 21, in which an obstruction between the jaws is bitten apart and penal law is applied. Read from a line about refusing an ending, that destination names the alternative honestly. What is not released willingly has eventually to be broken through, and the breaking is harsher than the acceptance would have been.