噬嗑
shì hé

21. Biting Through

䷔
Above
離 lí
The Clinging, Fire
Below
震 zhèn
The Arousing, Thunder

This hexa­gram rep­re­sents an open mouth (cf. hexa­gram 27) with an ob­struc­tion (in the fourth place) be­tween the teeth. As a re­sult the lips can­not meet. To bring them to­geth­er one must bite en­er­get­i­cal­ly through the ob­sta­cle. Since the hexa­gram is made up of the tri­grams for thun­der and for light­ning, it in­di­cates how ob­sta­cles are forcibly re­moved in na­ture. En­er­getic bit­ing through over­comes the ob­sta­cle that pre­vents join­ing of the lips; the storm with its thun­der and light­ning over­comes the dis­turb­ing ten­sion in na­ture. Re­course to law and penal­ties over­comes the dis­tur­bances of har­mo­nious so­cial life caused by crim­i­nals and slan­der­ers. The theme of this hexa­gram is a crim­i­nal law­suit, in con­tradis­tinc­tion to that of Sung, con­flict, which refers to civil suits.

The Judgement

Biting through has success.
It is favorable to let justice be administered.

When an ob­sta­cle to union aris­es, en­er­getic bit­ing through brings suc­cess. This is true in all sit­u­a­tions. When­ev­er unity can­not be es­tab­lished, the ob­struc­tion is due to a tale­bear­er and trai­tor who is in­ter­fer­ing and block­ing the way. To pre­vent per­ma­nent in­jury, vig­or­ous mea­sures must be taken at once. De­lib­er­ate ob­struc­tion of this sort does not van­ish of its own ac­cord. Judg­ment and pun­ish­ment are re­quired to deter or ob­vi­ate it.

How­ev­er, it is im­por­tant to pro­ceed in the right way. The hexa­gram com­bines Li, clar­i­ty, and Chen, ex­cite­ment. Li is yield­ing, Chen is hard. Un­qual­i­fied hard­ness and ex­cite­ment would be too vi­o­lent in met­ing out pun­ish­ment; un­qual­i­fied clar­i­ty and gen­tle­ness would be too weak. The two to­geth­er cre­ate the just mea­sure. It is of mo­ment that the man who makes the de­ci­sions (rep­re­sent­ed by the fifth line) is gen­tle by na­ture, while he com­mands re­spect by his con­duct in his po­si­tion.

The Image

Thunder and lightning:
The image of biting through.
Thus the kings of former times made firm the laws
Through clearly defined penalties.

Penal­ties are the in­di­vid­ual ap­pli­ca­tions of the law. The laws spec­i­fy the penal­ties. Clar­i­ty pre­vails when mild and se­vere penal­ties are clear­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed, ac­cord­ing to the na­ture of the crimes. This is sym­bol­ized by the clar­i­ty of light­ning. The law is strength­ened by a just ap­pli­ca­tion of penal­ties. This is sym­bol­ized by the ter­ror of thun­der. This clar­i­ty and sever­i­ty have the ef­fect of in­still­ing re­spect; it is not that the penal­ties are ends in them­selves. The ob­struc­tions in the so­cial life of man in­crease when there is lack of clar­i­ty in the penal codes and slack­ness in ex­e­cut­ing them. The only way to strength­en the law is to make it clear and to make penal­ties cer­tain and swift.

The Lines

Nine at the beginning means:
His feet are fastened in the stocks,
So that his toes disappear.
No blame.

If a sen­tence is im­posed the first time a man at­tempts to do wrong, the penal­ty is a mild one. Only the toes are put in the stocks. This pre­vents him from sin­ning fur­ther and thus he be­comes free of blame. It is a warn­ing to halt in time on the path of evil.

Six in the second place means:
Bites through tender meat,
So that his nose disappears.
No blame.

It is easy to dis­crim­i­nate be­tween right and wrong in this case; it is like bit­ing through ten­der meat. But one en­coun­ters a hard­ened sin­ner, and, aroused by anger, one goes a lit­tle too far. The dis­ap­pear­ance of the nose in the course of the bite sig­ni­fies that in­dig­na­tion blots out finer sen­si­bil­i­ty. How­ev­er, there is no great harm in this, be­cause the penal­ty as such is just.

Six in the third place means:
Bites on old dried meat
And strikes on something poisonous.
Slight humiliation. No blame.

Pun­ish­ment is to be car­ried out by some­one who lacks the power and au­thor­i­ty to do so. There­fore the cul­prits do not sub­mit. The mat­ter at issue is an old one—as sym­bol­ized by salt­ed game—and in deal­ing with it dif­fi­cul­ties arise. This old meat is spoiled: by tak­ing up the prob­lem the pun­ish­er arous­es poi­so­nous ha­tred against him­self, and in this way is put in a some­what hu­mil­i­at­ing po­si­tion. But since pun­ish­ment was re­quired by the time, he re­mains free of blame.

Nine in the fourth place means:
Bites on dried gristly meat.
Receives metal arrows.
It furthers one to be mindful of difficulties
And to be persevering.
Good fortune.

There are great ob­sta­cles to be over­come, pow­er­ful op­po­nents are to be pun­ished. Though this is ar­du­ous, the ef­fort suc­ceeds. But it is nec­es­sary to be hard as metal and straight as an arrow to sur­mount the dif­fi­cul­ties. If one knows these dif­fi­cul­ties and re­mains per­se­ver­ing, he at­tains good for­tune. The dif­fi­cult task is achieved in the end.

Six in the fifth place means:
Bites on dried lean meat.
Receives yellow gold.
Perseveringly aware of danger.
No blame.

The case to be de­cid­ed is in­deed not easy but per­fect­ly clear. Since we nat­u­ral­ly in­cline to le­nien­cy, we must make every ef­fort to be like yel­low gold—that is, as true as gold and as im­par­tial as yel­low, the color of the mid­dle [the mean]. It is only by re­main­ing con­scious of the dan­gers grow­ing out of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty we have as­sumed that we can avoid mak­ing mis­takes.

Nine at the top means:
His neck is fastened in the wooden cangue,
So that his ears disappear.
Misfortune.

In con­trast to the first line, this line refers to a man who is in­cor­ri­gi­ble. His pun­ish­ment is the wood­en cangue, and his ears dis­ap­pear under it—that is to say, he is deaf to warn­ings. This ob­sti­na­cy leads to mis­for­tune.