וַֽיִּמְצְא֤וּ אִישׁ־מִצְרִי֙ בַּשָּׂדֶ֔ה וַיִּקְח֥וּ אֹת֖וֹ אֶל־דָּוִ֑ד...
In the open country, they came upon an Egyptian—and brought him to David.
(The above rendering comes from the RJPS translation, an adaptation of the NJPS translation. Before accounting for this rendering, I will analyze the plain sense of the Hebrew term containing אִישׁ, by employing a situation-oriented construal as outlined in this document, pp. 11–16.)
As is common in schematic depictions of a situation, אִישׁ marks its referent as a participant whose presence is essential for grasping that situation.
As for rendering into English, the NJPS ‘They came upon an Egyptian in the open country and brought him to David’ does not provide this newly introduced character with the situational prominence that the label אִישׁ gives him in the source text. To that end, I have recast the sentence, which now resembles NRSV and REB. Even though the label an Egyptian has not changed, its nuance has.