"Pay shall he pay an ox for an ox" — the Torah prescribes the remedy when a mued (habitual goring ox) kills another person's ox. The payment is a beast for a beast. But the Mekhilta asks: can the owner pay with money instead?
The answer comes through the same gezeirah shavah used earlier. The phrase "and the carcass shall belong to him" appears here and also in the pit-liability passage (Exodus 21:34). In the pit case, the Torah specifies money as the form of payment. By linking the two passages through their shared phrase, the Mekhilta transfers the payment options between them.
Just as the pit-digger can pay with a beast (derived from this passage), the mued's owner can pay with money (derived from the pit passage). The verbal bridge creates reciprocal flexibility. Each passage grants the other a payment option it did not originally specify.
This technique illustrates a powerful feature of the Mekhilta's legal system. Individual Torah passages, read in isolation, appear to prescribe narrow remedies — this one says "beast," that one says "money." But the gezeirah shavah connects them into a unified network where legal principles flow between passages through shared vocabulary. The result is a more flexible and practical system of damages than any single verse would suggest on its own. Payment in kind or in cash — the Torah accommodates both, but you need to read multiple passages together to see it.