If Shì Hé has appeared in your reading, the book is naming a situation in which something specific is in the way and the response is to bite through it. The character itself means to chew. The fourth line of the hexagram is yang in a place that should be yin — it is the obstruction lodged between the upper and lower halves. The work is to remove it.

Classical commentary reads this hexagram judicially. Thunder below, fire above; the lightning strikes and the thunder follows, and the matter is settled. The image is decisive action carried out with both clarity and visible procedure. The book uses this hexagram when a euphemism, a delay, or a soft handling would only let the obstacle harden.

What the book counsels is the directness that does not pretend to be softer than it is. 利用獄 — fitting to apply the law. The clearance is for formal correction: the institutional response, the named consequence, the spoken refusal. Done well, this kind of action restores circulation. Done evasively, it festers.

Shì Hé's failure mode is the timid bite — the half-measure that does not actually clear the obstruction. The hexagram appears when the reader has known for some time that something needs to be addressed cleanly. The book is not asking for cruelty. It is asking for the courage to do the thing fully, in the open, in a form that can be seen and recognised.