Difficulty at the Beginning, Line 2

The second line complicates the difficulty of the first with a scene of apparent retreat. Legge renders the subject as distressed and obliged to return, even the horses of the chariot seeming to retreat, an image of forward motion stalling and turning back on itself. The line's deeper reading, carried in traditional commentary, is that what first appears as plunder or threat approaching is in fact a suitor, someone seeking rightful union rather than harm, and that the appearance of danger is not the same as danger itself.

This is the central place of the lower trigram Zhen, a position commentary tradition treats as a seat of genuine capacity even while movement itself remains obstructed. The horses seeming to retreat mirror the larger difficulty of the hexagram: thunder wants to move, but water above still hinders it, and the line shows a subject reading that hindrance correctly, choosing to wait rather than to force a meeting or a departure before the moment is ready.

Traditional commentary reads the line as counsel against misjudging appearances under pressure. What looks like an approaching threat at a moment of general difficulty may in fact be help, or a rightful match, arriving in a form the beginning's confusion makes hard to recognize. The line's resolution, that holding firm brings eventual union, depends on this correct reading: retreat here is not final defeat but a pause before the true approach is properly received.

Six in the second place is read divinatorially as a caution against misreading an approach made under the shadow of general difficulty. What seems like plunder or threat drawing near may in fact be a rightful match or genuine help, and the line counsels the querent to look past the surface alarm of the moment before deciding how to respond to it. Retreat, in this reading, is not defeat but a necessary pause while the true nature of what approaches becomes clear.

Set within the hexagram's difficult opening, this line shows capacity present, the central place of the lower trigram, but still constrained by the surrounding confusion that governs every line of the hexagram. A reading landing here often points to a relationship, offer, or opportunity arriving at an inconvenient or unsettling moment, one that provokes suspicion before it can be properly recognized for what it actually is. The line's counsel is not permanent avoidance but patient discernment.

Divinatory tradition reads the promised outcome, eventual union once firmness is held, as conditional on that discernment rather than automatic. A changing line here often marks a decision point where the querent must resist an initial impulse to flee or refuse, and instead wait long enough to see the approaching party clearly, since the difficulty of the hexagram's beginning is as likely to disguise a genuine ally as it is to disguise an actual threat.