Wind rising from fire: a hexagram of household order, which begins by putting the inner life right and spreads outward from there.
Xun ☴, wind, whose quality is entering, lies above Li ☲, fire, bright and clinging; in the Shuogua's family of trigrams they are the eldest and the middle daughter. Zhu Xi reads the hexagram as the people of one household, set in order because the fifth and second lines are each correct in their outer and inner places. Putting the inside right comes first; once it is right, he says, the outside follows.
Judgment (卦辭)
The text attached to the whole hexagram, read when no line is changing.
家人，利女貞。
Jia Ren: it is fitting for the woman to be correct and firm.
Zhu Xi reads the name simply as the people of one household. The fifth line, strong and central, holds the outer trigram, and the second line, yielding and central, holds the inner one, each correct in its own sphere. The judgment speaks only of the woman's steadfastness because, in his reading, the inside has to be put right first, and once the inside is correct nothing outside is left incorrect. The order runs from within outward.
Image (大象)
The Image commentary (象傳) reads the whole hexagram from its two trigrams.
風自火出，家人。君子以言有物而行有恆。
Wind comes out of fire: Household. So the noble person's words have substance, and his conduct is constant.
Wind rising out of fire suggests something that starts within and spreads outward. Zhu Xi's note on the sentence is that when the self is cultivated, the household is set in order. Words with real content and conduct that does not waver are where that cultivation shows.
Lines (爻辭)
From the bottom line to the top. In the line names, nine (九) marks a yang line and six (六) a yin line.
Line 1, yang (初九)changing line in the shared reading
閑有家，悔亡。
Guarding the household with firm bounds. Regret vanishes.
The first line (初九) is strong, and it stands at the very beginning of household life. Zhu Xi reads its task as setting bounds early, guarding against what might go wrong before it does, and says regret then disappears. He frames the line as advice to whoever receives it. Rules set at the start cost less than repairs made later.
Line 2, yin (六二)changing line in the shared reading
无攸遂，在中饋，貞吉。
She pursues nothing of her own; she sees to the meals within. Being correct and firm brings good fortune.
The second line (六二) is yielding, compliant, central and correct, the line Zhu Xi calls a woman rightly placed within the household. The picture is of someone who does not pursue undertakings of her own but sees to the household's meals. His note goes no further than that, and the text ties its good fortune to steadfast correctness in that inner place.
Line 3, yang (九三)changing line in the shared reading
家人嗃嗃，悔厲吉。婦子嘻嘻，終吝。
Stern words in the household: regret and danger, yet good fortune. Wife and children giggling: in the end, humiliation.
Strong in a strong place and off center, the third line (九三) leans toward severity. Zhu Xi accepts the cost: harsh strictness brings regret and some danger, yet it ends well. Giggling wife and children are the opposite error, and that path ends in shame. The text names both, he explains, because each person who receives the line answers to it according to their own disposition.
Line 4, yin (六四)changing line in the shared reading
富家，大吉。
Enriching the household. Great good fortune.
Zhu Xi explains that yang stands for what is right and yin for what is beneficial. The fourth line (六四) is yin in a yin place, correctly seated in the upper trigram, and so it is the member who makes the household prosper. The text judges this highly favorable. The prosperity belongs to the household as a whole and comes from someone in their right place.
Line 5, yang (九五)changing line in the shared reading
王假有家，勿恤，吉。
The king comes to his household. Do not worry. Good fortune.
Zhu Xi glosses 假 as 'to arrive,' the same word used of approaching the great ancestral temple, and takes 'household' here as standing for a whole state. The fifth line (九五), strong, central and correct, meets an equally correct partner in the second. A king who comes to his household with such a character has nothing to worry over. Zhu Xi reads it as a favorable sign for taking a queen or consort, and for anyone with the same virtue.
Top line, yang (上九)changing line in the shared reading
有孚威如，終吉。
There is sincerity, and a commanding presence. In the end, good fortune.
At the end of the hexagram, Zhu Xi says, the text turns to what keeps a household in order over a long time. The top line (上九) is firm, and the two qualities it names work together: sincerity that others can rely on, and a bearing that commands respect. Good fortune at the end belongs to both together, not to either alone.
If you drew this hexagram
Which text to read depends on how many lines are changing. With none, read the judgment; with one, read that line; with more, follow Zhu Xi's rules in the Yixue qimeng.
Text: Zhu Xi, Yuanben Zhouyi benyi (原本周易本義), Siku Quanshu Wenyuange copy, as transcribed by the Kanseki Repository (KR1a0031), corrected and punctuated by K-magpie. Translation and explanation: written by AI (Claude) from Zhu Xi's commentary and checked against the text and commentary. Sources and the list of corrections are on the Today's Hexagram page.