And so shall you do with his donkey, and so shall you do with his garment, and so shall you do with every lost item of your brother’s that he loses and you find; you shall not be able to hide yourself.
English: “And you find it” — excluding [an object that is already] found [i.e., publicly known to be lost and available].
On the daf / in context: The verb “and you find it” is taken to limit the obligation to objects that the finder discovers, not to objects that are already in a public lost-and-found state.
Type of Learning
Limiting derash (mi’ut) on the word “u-metzatah.”
What Is Learned
The biblical duty of return applies when a person discovers a lost object, not when the object is already known and available for claim in a public place.