“Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.”
You can shape an opponent's choices by what you dangle and what you conceal, then strike the resulting gap.
This is the stratagem-catalogue version of Chapter 1’s bait doctrine — the same pair, 利而诱之，乱而取之, placed in the closing list where Sun Tzu files his devices for reuse. In the curated daily entry the bait was framed as incentive design; here, in situ, the verse does different work: it is one item in a sequence of contrivances, teaching that the catalogue itself is meant to be deployed in combination, not memorized as maxims.
A job candidate reveals, quite sincerely, that she is weighing an offer from another firm — the bait is true, which is why it works. The employer accelerates: better title, earlier review, the works. What the candidate’s revelation concealed was that the other offer was for a role she had already decided against. The employer walked into her actual aim — a renegotiated package — by chasing the appearance of competition. Revealed fact, concealed frame, captured counterparty.
In the catalogue’s context the danger is mechanical application — running the bait play on schedule rather than reading the ground for it. The verse sits among devices that follow the assessment verses; the bait works when it fits what this particular opponent actually wants, which Chapter 1 has just taught you to determine. Deployed without that reading, the same move is just noise with an ancient pedigree.