וַיִּשְׁלַ֨ח אֹתָ֥ם מֹשֶׁ֛ה מִמִּדְבַּ֥ר פָּארָ֖ן עַל־פִּ֣י יְהֹוָ֑ה כֻּלָּ֣ם אֲנָשִׁ֔ים רָאשֵׁ֥י בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל הֵֽמָּה׃
So Moses, by GOD’s command, sent them out from the wilderness of Paran—all of them being men of consequence, leaders of the Israelites.
(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—in this case, its plural form אֲנָשִׁים—by employing a situation-oriented construal as outlined in this introduction, pp. 11–16.)
In this case, אֲנָשִׁים is employed as the clause’s entire predicate (or alternatively, as its nonverbal comment on the topic). Such non-referential usages are rare. Another case is 1 Chr 9:9.
As such, this bare noun seems downright superfluous if construed in terms of the conventional wisdom about its meaning contribution: given the previous verse’s specification that these participants must be “chieftains,” is it not already obvious that they are adult males? Why make an issue of their gender here?
Not surprisingly, many commentators attribute an extra nuance of meaning, in order to yield an informative and coherent reading. Rashi states:
כל אנשים לשון חשיבות הוא.
Every* [instance of the word**] אֲנָשִׁים connotes importance.***
*The supercommentary called Sifte Ḥakhamim by Shabbetai the Bass-Singer (1680) 1995:244 explains that Rashi must be referring only to instances of אֲנָשִׁים that are bare (not otherwise modified) and are employed predicatively.
**The reading in some manuscripts adds a word: שֶׁבַּמִּקְרָא ‘in the Bible’.
***The public-domain translation on Sefaria, by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, renders חֲשִׁיבוּת as “worthiness,” which seems misleading and misplaced—for it is also their rendering for the word כְּשֵׁרִים later in the same comment, and more defensible there.
What kind of importance? Many interpreters take it that Rashi meant the referents’ social standing. Likewise, Kimḥi glosses כֻּלָּם אֲנָשִׁים (which he adduces at 1 Kgs 2:2) as גדולים ונכבדים ‘prominent and esteemed’. Hence Jacob Milgrom (JPS Torah Commentary 1990:101) offers the rendering ‘all of them dignitaries’; likewise, Baruch Levine (Anchor Bible 1993:351) renders as ‘all of them were important personages’. And for his part, Everett Fox renders as ‘all of them men [of standing].’
But how exactly does אִישׁ or אֲנָשִׁים come to have such a meaning? Rashi’s generalization is telling if his phrase לְשׁוֹן חֲשִׁיבוּת is construed as ‘the language of consequence’, describing the discourse function of אִישׁ rather than its informational content. Prototypically, the situating noun אִישׁ is employed as the head of a referring expression. As such, it labels an essential participant—one whose involvement defines the situation of interest. At the same time, by regarding its referent in terms of the overall situation, אִישׁ directs our attention to that situation.
When אִישׁ is employed non-referentially, a nuance of importance follows by analogy from the constitutive power of אִישׁ to efficiently define a prototypical situation in the audience’s discourse model. Such a usage transfers meaning from the discourse level of communication to the informational level: the persons in question are said to be consequential in their impact on those around them. In today’s parlance, they are “influencers.” (I.e., the predication is not describing the scouts in terms of their social standing per se.)
Hence we have arrived at a construal that yields a coherent and informative text. The apposed notice כֻּלָּם אֲנָשִׁים underscores that we should expect the opinion of these scouts to be influential. In this case, such a notice is indeed germane, because the very fact that others trust them will come back to haunt these leaders after they return from their mission and give their report.
As for rendering into English, the contemporary audience will infer from the specification of “chieftains” in the previous verse that women are not in view. Thus we have no warrant to translate in gendered terms.
The NJPS rendering “all the men being leaders of the Israelites” appears to fudge this passage by combining this clause with the next one—as if the Hebrew text reads כָּל־הָאֲנָשִׁים rather than כֻּלָּם אֲנָשִׁים. That move does not seem defensible, for it converts a pointedly non-referential usage into a referential one.
The revised rendering preserves a conceptual link between this unusual usage of אֲנָשִׁים and its prototypical usage in elaboration about a discourse-active participant.