וְכׇל־עֶ֥בֶד אִ֖ישׁ מִקְנַת־כָּ֑סֶף וּמַלְתָּ֣ה אֹת֔וֹ אָ֖ז יֹ֥אכַל בּֽוֹ׃
But any [male] slave you have bought may eat of it once he has been circumcised.
(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 אִישׁ, by employing a situation-oriented construal as outlined in this introduction, pp. 11–16.)
Heb. עֶבֶד אִישׁ מִקְנַת־כָּסֶף. The phrase encapsulates a hypothetical situation that features a purchased slave with his owner. As it prototypically does, אִישׁ here labels an essential participant who not only sets up the situation of interest by owning the slave in question, but also is the key actor: the one who must take action to have the slave circumcised. (Indeed, in the next clause, the verb is couched in the second-person, directly addressed to this party.)
The owner’s gender is not at issue. Gender is specified neither by the noun אִישׁ itself nor by the non-specific reference. Although I am not aware of clear evidence that Israelite women owned male slaves, we likewise lack clear evidence that this was considered unthinkable.
As for rendering into English, the NJPS ‘any slave a man has bought’ nowadays implies that only adult males are in view as slave owners. Yet there is no warrant for a gendered rendering here, since women are not definitely excluded from view. The revised rendering is more properly situation oriented. Like NJPS, it is an idiomatic (rather than literal) rendering.