הָב֣וּ לָ֠כֶ֠ם אֲנָשִׁ֨ים חֲכָמִ֧ים וּנְבֹנִ֛ים וִידֻעִ֖ים לְשִׁבְטֵיכֶ֑ם וַאֲשִׂימֵ֖ם בְּרָאשֵׁיכֶֽם׃
Pick from each of your tribes individuals who are wise, discerning, and experienced, and I will appoint them as your heads.”
(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—in this case its plural form אֲנָשִׁים—by employing a situation-oriented construal as outlined in this introduction, pp. 11–16.)
When issuing a directive, as here, a speaker typically provides a schematic frame of the situation that the speaker hopes to achieve. Often that situation is defined by its essential participants, who are efficiently labeled as such via a situating noun. Hence this instance is a prototypical usage of אֲנָשִׁים as a situating noun.
The reference here is to a type, rather than to specific individuals. Hence the gender of the persons in view is not specified by the grammar (other than their being not solely womanly). That is, women are not excluded by the grammar. (It is purely for the sake of syntactic gender concord that the adjectives have masculine form, and that the corresponding suffixed pronoun “them” is masculine.)
The referent’s gender is not at issue. Rather, given Israelite social mores, it goes without saying the people’s leaders would be adult males (except perhaps for a very few extraordinary women in unusual circumstances).
As for rendering into English, the NJPS ‘men’ nowadays overemphasizes gender, implying that women are being explicitly excluded. To avoid that misimpression, the revised rendering is gender neutral. I have sought out a noun that individuates its referent while otherwise avoiding profiling them in terms of intrinsic qualities. This is intended to put attention on the desired situation/activity as much as possible, as אֲנָשִׁים does in Hebrew.
Use of a gender-neutral noun does not imply that women are in view. Rather, when a referent’s gender is not at issue, English idiom typically expects it to be specified only if it is not obvious. Here, the contemporary audience is expected to realize that the referent’s gender is restricted due to the topic of tribal leadership.