"And it be broken or die" — the Torah lists two outcomes for a borrowed animal: it breaks (is injured by another animal) or it dies (of natural causes). But the Mekhilta asks: what about seizure by robbers? A borrowed animal might be taken by force. Is the borrower liable for that?
The answer comes through a gezeirah shavah — a verbal analogy. The word "die" appears in this passage about borrowers and also in the earlier passage about unpaid guardians (Exodus 22:9). In the guardian passage, seizure is explicitly juxtaposed with death. The Mekhilta transfers that juxtaposition: just as seizure is linked with death in the guardian law, seizure is understood to be linked with death in the borrower law as well.
The practical effect is that the borrower's liability extends to seizure, even though the Torah does not mention it explicitly in the borrower passage. The verbal link — the shared word "die" — imports the additional category from one passage into the other.
This technique allows the Torah to state a principle in full detail in one location and then invoke it elsewhere through a single shared word. The legal system is interconnected. Each passage does not stand alone as an isolated rule. Words create bridges between sections, and legal obligations travel across those bridges. A single word — "die" — appearing in two contexts, makes the borrower responsible for a scenario that his own passage never mentions.