01 / THE EARLY TEXT
The words themselves.
An interpretive English translation. Read the translation notes. Six and nine name line types; positions run from bottom to top.
无妄：元亨。利貞。其匪正有眚，不利有攸往。
Wu Wang: Great success. A favorable determination. If it is not right, there is calamity. Unfavorable to have somewhere to go.
初九：无妄，往吉。
Nine at the beginning: Without unexpected trouble. Going is auspicious.
六二：不耕穫，不菑畬，則利有攸往。
Six in the second place: Not plowing for the harvest, not clearing new land for an established field. Then it is favorable to have somewhere to go.
六三：无妄之災，或系之牛，行人之得，邑人之災。
Six in the third place: Unexpected calamity. An ox is tethered: the traveler's gain, the settlement's disaster.
九四：可貞，无咎。
Nine in the fourth place: A determination may be made. No blame.
九五：无妄之疾，勿藥有喜。
Nine in the fifth place: Unexpected illness. Without medicine, there is a favorable outcome.
上九：无妄，行有眚，无攸利。
Nine at the top: The unexpected. Traveling brings calamity. Nothing is favorable.
02 / A POSSIBLE CONTEXT
What might the question have been?
When livestock, crops, or health suddenly suffer, is the trouble caused by a fault, or has it arrived unexpectedly?
A possible setting
A tethered ox is taken by a passerby, and the settlement suffers the consequences. Another line concerns illness without an obvious cause. Farming appears in a difficult phrase about plowing and harvest.
How the words respond
The judgment warns against an ill-aligned undertaking. The stolen ox shows how one person's gain becomes someone else's misfortune. The illness line advises against medicine in that ancient scenario; it is not modern medical advice. The last line warns that further movement brings trouble.
Unexpected events and undeserved harm offer an alternative to reading the title solely as moral innocence. The farming line has several interpretations.
This scenario adapts the Chinese edition's historical reading. It is a possible reconstruction, not an established single event or the only interpretation.