Rabbi Akiva offered his own reading of "the owner of the ox is absolved." He argued that the tam's owner is absolved from paying for the value of fetuses.
His reasoning: both a man and an ox can cause injury. When a man intends to strike another man and instead hits a pregnant woman, causing a miscarriage, he must pay for the lost fetuses. If a man is liable in this scenario, should not the owner of an ox that causes a miscarriage be liable as well?
The Torah blocks this extension. "The owner of the ox is absolved" — specifically, absolved from the fetus payment that would otherwise be imposed by analogy to the human assailant. The tam's owner pays no compensation for the pregnancy that was lost.
Rabbi Akiva's interpretation completes a trilogy. Ben Azzai said the absolution targets half-kofer. Rabban Gamliel said it targets bondservant-value payments. Rabbi Akiva said it targets fetus payments. Each reading is logically independent. Each traces a different analogy that would have created liability if the Torah had not intervened with an explicit absolution.
Together, the three readings demonstrate the Mekhilta's extraordinary analytical depth. A single four-word phrase — "the owner is absolved" — generates three distinct legal rulings, each blocking a separate obligation that the system would otherwise have imposed through perfectly valid reasoning.